


Eight

by aprildaze



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Kakashi Deals With Depression, Like Several Lifetimes of Slow Burn, M/M, Slow Burn, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:18:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprildaze/pseuds/aprildaze
Summary: The eight extraordinary lives of Maito Gai and the single, significantly less extraordinary life of Hatake Kakashi.





	1. Opening

**Author's Note:**

> Rated M for mature themes around trauma, violence and mental health, rather than explicit sexual content.

##### PART SEVEN: WONDER

 

“No,” Kakashi says, pressing his hands deeper against the wound. “No, Gai, _no,_ ” he urges and in his eyes he sees Rin, he sees Obito and Minato and Kushina and Sakumo and all the loved ones he was never allowed to save.

“My rival,” Gai whispers, though to call it a whisper is generous: Gai coughs up blood with the endearment, coating his chin with a fresh stain of red. His right hand rises weakly at his side, but Kakashi is cruel, sometimes, and does not take it.

“Gai, stop, _stop,_ ” he pleads, pressing his palms against the wound as if he can will it closed with his rage and grief alone.

“My rival,” Gai repeats, eyes shining. “I’m happy. Happy you love so much, despite how long and cruel life has been to you.”

“Gai,” Kakashi whispers, pressing his forehead close, bent over the body that is hardly more than a boy, despite his death, despite his dying.

 

But you want to know their beginning, not their end.

So we’ll start here:

 

##### PART ONE: OPENING

 

Kakashi is already several centuries old. Ancient by your standards, but quite youthful for a lightning spirit. Maito Gai won’t be told any of this for quite a long time — long by anyone’s standards, except for perhaps Kakashi’s — as the powerful lightning spirit is simply too lazy to tell the bright-eyed boy he has worse than no chance at all of beating him.

“A challenge?” Kakashi repeats, yawning. “Not now, I’m busy.”

Gai stomps his feet. He is eleven but looks much smaller. 

“Gah!” he declares. “You said that last time!”

And the time before that and the time before that, though Gai is too polite to mention it.

Kakashi shrugs. Gai plants both feet against the ground, throwing his arm out with a long, accusing finger.

“No! Not today, Rival!” he declares. “Today we meet in courageous battle for glory, proving what lies deepest in our hearts through vigorous combat!”

Kakashi looks down and away at the peaceful river. A few reeds poke out from the riverbed, gently swaying with the slow current. The songbirds are soft, and the breeze gentle. He’s certain now that there’ll be no waiting this one out: he’ll simply have to crush Gai’s spirit.

“Well… alright,” Kakashi sighs, pushing to his feet.

“I’ve been training with Lord Chen, master of a hundred lifetimes, the greatest kung fu— _what?_ ” 

Gai, now that his greatest dream of the last three weeks is on the brink of fulfillment, hardly seems to know what to do with himself. Kakashi waits, eventually raising his visible eyebrow, until Gai stutters back into life, leaping into a starting stance.

“You won’t regret it, Rival!” he shouts, immediately leaping forward with a high kick. Kakashi yawns and raises his hand, lazily grabbing Gai’s ankle. Gai’s eyes widen; Kakashi sends a small zap of electricity running through his body.

He doesn’t intend to kill him, but he’s never fought a human before. Gai convulses, falling onto the ground, his wide gaze now stuck on the sky.

“Gai?” Kakashi asks, peering close.

“Oof,” Gai groans, limbs splayed out in an ungainly star. “I would expect no less… from my Rival.”

 

“Rival!”

Kakashi startles — and just between us — comes dangerously close to tumbling out of his favorite maple tree. Gai is hanging upside from the branch above him, beaming bright.

“I challenge you to a second honorable match, where upon we draw solely on our passionate strength and youthful limbs!”

Kakashi translates this to: _No cheating!_

“I decline,” Kakashi answers, frowning behind his mask. The terrifying, if dull, lightning spirit had been certain their last challenge could convince anyone that the supernatural is not be trifled with, shouted at, and above all, challenged.

“Ah-ha! Afraid you’ll lose?” Gai taunts. A few weeks ago his head was shaved completely bald, but since then a light fuzz of black hair has grown in. Kakashi’s frown deepens.

“Kasai Temple isn’t close, is it?” he hedges. Gai shrugs, an impressive feet upside down.

“This is a great era of peace! There is plenty of time for youthful adventure.”

Gai does not strike Kakashi as the type of monk to shirk duty or prayer, and so with a heavy heart, he takes his word for it. 

Gai is still expectedly staring at Kakashi, though his brown skin is darkening to a strange, red-violet color. Much longer, and the flood of blood to Gai’s skull will decide the challenge for them.

After all this shouting, it doesn’t quite seem fair, even to a lazy lightning spirit.

“Once more,” Kakashi sighs.

 

Oh, this is beginning to grow out of hand.

“Gai,” Kakashi says, careful and slow. “It’s the middle of winter.”

Gai’s teeth are chattering. He’s wearing what looks like a thick blanket with buttons over his dark green robes.

“I-I-I,” he begins, teeth knocking together loudly between each syllable. Kakashi waves his hand, already understanding how this greeting is going to end.

“Is he going to be okay?” Kushina asks.

Gai screams.

Kakashi, at first glance, passes as human, with few people looking past his white skin and slumped posture. His strange eye is covered, his hair is silver but could pass as gray, and importantly, he’s never once had any strange tails sticking out of him.

Kushina — half fox, half human, half something else entirely terrifying — does not present the same comforting illusion of mortality. 

Gai’s mouth is still hanging wide, gaze mostly caught on her elongated canines.

“Bring him inside or he’ll freeze, y’know!” Kushina frets. 

Kakashi sighs, looking from Gai to Kushina to the warm den.

“Gai?” he asks.

“I-I-I—!”

In this guise Kakashi’s about the same height as Gai, lankier but still stronger. He presses both hands against the boy’s back, shoving him towards Kushina’s home.

“He would be _delighted,_ ” Kakashi beams. Kushina beams right back, while Gai looks vaguely sick between them.

Kushina dashes ahead, lighting her home with a quick hand sign. The den is warm, round and dark-walled, filled with bright furniture and vaguely disturbing knick-knacks — somehow, it all works together to create an intimate, cozy home.

“Set the sakaki ashes down on my desk, I’ll make us some tea!”

There’s an ume branch on the kotatsu, evidence Minato has stopped by recently. Kushina is careful to move the winter flower before setting down her best seating cushion for Gai.

“Sit, sit!” she insists. Gai is still stuck at the edge of the den, staring at a twisted piece of wood that resembles a long-fanged eel. Kakashi carefully sets down his container of tree ash beside it, and then half nudges, half drags, the young monk over to the kotatsu.

Gai does not look quite right... Even sitting in his blanket-coat, he appears more like a chunk of ice than an honored guest. Kakashi settles in beside him, a weight settling uneasily in his chest: after all, what does Kakashi know of humans? Maybe the homes of spirits are just bad for mortal men as the harsh mountain winters.

Kakashi watches Gai as Kushina bangs around in the kitchen. The human doesn’t look any worse for being indoors, but he also doesn’t look any better.

“Here you go!” Kushina declares, proudly setting down three chipped cups and a matching pot, pouring the first serving of tea with only a little bit of splashing. Gai reaches out, surprisingly soft as he takes the steaming cup of tea to his lips, drinking deeply. For a moment his eyes flutter closed — and then suddenly, he’s grinning.

“Truly delicious!” he declares, warmth blooming beneath his dark skin, like spring wood peaking out of melting snow banks. “I am in debt to your noble hospitality. Thank you for offering me respite from the cold.”

Kushina laughs. “It’s nothing,” she answers. “I’ve never met a shivering fire spirit, y’know.”

Gai looks left, then right, then back at Kushina.

“Uh, where?”

Kakashi rubs his temples. In his wildest dreams, he had never imagined that Kushina and Gai would meet, and so he had never considered the practical importance of keeping such exuberant personalities _far away_ from each other.

“Gai is human,” he explains. 

“Human!” Kushina exclaims, now staring openly at Kakashi as if he’s the strange company. “I never thought you’d befriend a human, y’know!”

Kakashi frowns.

“We’re not friends.”

Gai grins, unperturbed.

“We’re Eternal Rivals!”

“Oh!” Kushina exclaims, clearly delighted despite just being introduce to the strange endearment. Kakashi feels a pressure building fiercely at the front of his skull. 

“How can we be enteral rivals if you’re human?” 

Gai _winks._

“Never doubt the deep bonds of honest competition.”

Kushina hums while pouring a fresh cup of tea for Gai and herself. “It’s been a while since Kakashi brought over a friend _or_ eternal rival,” she teases. “Sometimes I’m afraid he only spends time with me, Minato, or those dirty old books.”

“My rival does have unique taste in literature,” Gai answers with all the enthusiasm of a chaste monk who had once turned as red as Kushina’s hair before abruptly flinging Kakashi’s favorite book in the nearby riverbed.

Gai still swears it was an accident — but Kakashi has yet to be convinced.

Kushina shrugs, resting her head in her hands with a dreamy expression. “Guess it was my fault for introducing Kakashi to them.”

Gai turns to look at Kakashi, face beaming with a fresh, goofy smile.

It makes Kakashi’s stomach turn. In that moment, he doesn’t know who he hates more: Kushina for inspiring carelessness, or Gai for so eagerly reflecting it.

“Just like my rival, to have such kind friends looking after him!”

Kakashi slams down his cup.

“Are spirits a joke to you?” he demands. “Kushina could crush your skull in one hand. Minato could call all manner of horrifying creatures to swallow you, and he would be kind, compared to what else is out there in these woods,” Kakashi gestures towards the door, towards the brutal winter and its unforgiving predators. “You have to stop running around the forest as if you’re immortal too.”

Gai shrugs. “But if I find trouble you’ll rush to defend me, won’t you?”

Kakashi stares, the heavy pressure curling tight within his bones.

_Obito. Rin._

“No,” he answers. “I won’t.”

For the first time, Gai looks startled by Kakashi’s attitude. A tense silence falls between them, chilling the room.

“Here,” Kushina says quickly. “Why don’t you try a cookie, Gai? I baked them myself this morning.”

 

Spring arrives late that year, though it arrives beautifully, an explosion of flora and lively rainstorms. Gai returns with Spring too, several inches taller, loud and boisterous as if the conversation at Kushina’s is a hazy dream difficult to recollect the details of.

Kakashi, after a long winter alone, is willing to treat it as a dream too.

Unfortunately, it’s as if meeting Kushina has lifted the ban on topics such as _Kakashi_ and _friends_ and _tea preferences_ and anything else beyond the tenuous peace of their insulated challenges.

Kakashi is used to being around only those who already know his character and story — tenuous and violent as they are — and so he has yet find a way to stave off Gai’s eclectic questions.

“Kushina…” Gai begins one afternoon late in the rainy season. Kakashi’s hands curl tense around his book, half worried Gai is going to ask after Kushina's horrid sesame cookie recipe, _again._ “She’s a wind spirit, isn’t she?”

Kakashi lets out a short, relieved sigh. “She is.”

“I thought only fire spirits live in the holy forest,” Gai presses. Kakashi glances up from his book, then back again at the page, feeling distinctly like he's the one under scrutiny.

“Well... seeing otherwise is rare,” he admits.

Hiruzen and the council ensured it’d be rarer still, after the war — but Kakashi doesn’t have the energy to explain spirit politics, which have centuries to tangle themselves in their own absurdity.

“This is the spiritual land of fire. The forest is its heart of power for the spirits who call it home… so certain spirits preserve the land's purity to protect it... so they say,” Kakashi pauses. “There are other lands in-between, which have a whole mix of spirits. You wouldn’t know where you were based on who you were meeting.”

“Ah, so you’re a great traveler!” Gai exclaims.

“Mmm,” Kakashi answers, turning back to his book.

“My father was the same way,” Gai says. “Once I’m ordained I’m going to travel all across the five great countries, spreading Kasai’s teachings and sharing the fruits of Youth and Dedication!” 

“Mmm,” Kakashi agrees.

“What is the world like?” Gai demands.

“The same everywhere.”

Gai laughs, kicking at the air with both legs. Kakashi notes that his form is getting sharper: there’s a speed to his movements that wasn’t there last fall. Kakashi has let this winter pass in much the same way he’s let every season before it pass — without comment or interest — while Gai has scraped up even the smallest moment of life with fierce exuberance. 

“It’s okay, rival! One day, I’ll see for myself.”

“Why did you join the Temple?” Kakashi finds himself asking.

Briefly, Gai’s brightness flickers away... and then just as quickly he’s smiling again. “For the challenge, of course!”

Kakashi realizes: it’s the first time Gai has ever lied to him.

_And who’s fault is that?_

Kakashi flinches, dragging his gaze back down to his book.

Spring will pass soon, just as quickly as winter.

These seasons never last long.

 

Gai slams his palm against Kakashi’s arm, his shoulder, his fist, and then back to his arm again. The movements are _so quick_ , nearly impossible to follow, elegant as a river or a beast at play: Kakashi finds his breath coming fast and short, reminding himself to center his energy, to find the flow of breath to movement that seems to come as natural as a heartbeat to Gai.

Gai steps forward, driving a strike home with swift force. Kakashi is driven back even further, and one doesn’t need to be a genius to know that he’s losing this fight, that he _will lose_ this fight, even before the final blow comes: a wide kick swung low at Kakashi’s feet and then quickly transferred back again, too quick to dodge. Kakashi sprawls to the ground as Gai looms over him, prefect and composed, terrifying in his grace and power.

Then just as suddenly, he’s grinning: kind and gentle Gai once more.

“That’s one!” he shouts, breaking his stance to pummel the air with his fists. “We’ll be tied in no time at all, Rival!”

 

It’s one of those nights when Kakashi can’t sleep — or whatever it is that spirits do when they’re at rest, trying to avoid the weight of living.

Instead Kakashi is waist-deep in rushing water, mind empty as he thrusts his hands again and again into the cold river, trying to change the texture of his skin beneath the violent currents. He wants his palms to be smooth — to be worn away like the soft pebbles embedded beneath his feet — but no matter how many hours he spends drowning his flesh again and again the lightning keeps dancing beneath his skin, biting at his bones, demanding that he _remember:_ remember her chest against his palms, her blood running down his fingertips, tracing the shape of his limbs while her mouth, still, smooth, curves in a gentle smile

_Rin. Rin._

Please, he begs the water. Please, _let me rest._

 

“I want to practice with magic!”

Kakashi snorts. It’s a silly name for what he can do, but it’s as good a name as any.

“You can’t use magic.”

“I know,” Gai answers, cross-legged and attentive on the meadow ground. “But you’re a lightning spirit! The first time we fought you used magic. It’s not a fair fight if you’re always holding back.”

Kakashi stiffens.

“No.”

“Why not?” Gai demands.

“You’ll get hurt.”

Gai waves away the concern, almost looking offended that Kakashi would dare to bring the point up. “I’ve already been hurt.”

“No,” Kakashi repeats, and to emphasize his point he draws out his latest book, which is really a very old book, too familiar to draw his full attention. From the corner of his eye he watches Gai push to his feet.

“Come on, Kakashi!” he leans over the spirit, blocking out the best sunlight for reading. “What are you afraid of?”

Kakashi pretends not to hear the question, turning to the next unread page of his truly gripping novel. Gai throws his hands up, turning and heading towards the clearing’s edge.

“I’ll challenge Kushina! I’m certain she’s youthful enough to be _of help._ ” 

Challenge _Kushina?_ It doesn’t sound like one of Gai’s usual threats, half made in jest in an elaborate ploy to convince Kakashi to agree with him. Kakashi sighs, setting the book in his lap and narrowing his eyes at the young monk. Gai may believe he’s strong enough to face a spirit at full power, but only because he knows kind spirits who are willing to humor and lie to him.

“Come on Gai, you don’t even know how to find Kushina.”

“I always find you, don’t I?”

A great coldness settles on Kakashi.

“I’ll stop you,” he warns.

Gai turns, his eyes blazing.

“You’ll use magic when it’s in _your_ interest?”

Kakashi doesn’t know how to answer, so instead he snaps, “You’re being ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous! ” Gai declares. "You tell me I’m weak but you never want to see me be strong!” Gai’s hands have curled into fists at his side, calloused and heavy. “You’re handsome and powerful but all you do is waste your days, lying around reading dirty old books!” he crosses the clearing, ripping the novel from Kakashi’s hands and throwing it to the ground, chest heaving despite the short distance. It’s been centuries since Kakashi has had to face this kind of anger: the anger that comes from love, the anger that comes from disappointment.

He is too startled to be anything but angry in turn.

“Damn it, Gai!” he shouts, rising to his feet. Gai shoves at his chest, even though it is ill advised to provoke a spirit, especially one as dangerous and unstable as Kakashi.

“I would protect you! I would give my life to protect you — but you’re cruel. Everyone could die and you’d still be happy as long as you had your stupid stories!”

Gai does not know about Rin. Gai does not know about Obito or Sakumo, but maybe that doesn’t matter. His rage is for himself, his rage is for Kakashi, and Kakashi is only thinking of the pain that lasts a lifetime, which does become easier to bear even as the centuries change, even as the years wear on.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he threatens.

“I do!” Gai shouts, shoving again. There are great, fat tears in his eyes but his anger is louder, strengthened by his grief. Kakashi tries to catch his fists, but Gai is too quick, too strong. “You’ll never change. You’re don’t care about anything, _anyone_.”

It’s hard to breathe. It’s impossible to breathe.

“Everyone I love dies,” Kakashi says, voice breaking. He manages to catch Gai’s wrists, but only because Gai himself has stilled, palm raised mid-strike at Kakashi’s heart. “I won’t curse you, too.”

“Kakashi,” Gai answers, voice equally fractured and raw. “I’m going to die. I’m human. I’m only human.”

Kakashi swallows, throat tight, heart impossibly heavy.

Gai begins to cry then, messy and loud, snot running down his nose and onto his chin. Kakashi stiffens and tries to wipe away some of the chaos with the edge of his sleeve, but the tears keep coming, thick and relentless.

“I’ll do better,” Kakashi whispers. “I’ll _be_ better.”

“When?” Gai sobs. “When?”

 

Kakashi is staring at a nearly empty plate of cookies. The three that remain look horrifying, lumpy and charred all over — yet the plate is nearly empty.

“How long has Gai been visiting?” he asks.

Kushina slams a pan onto the stovetop. “I don’t know,” she snaps. “Years now, I suppose.”

Kushina is old, very old, by both your standards and Kakashi’s. Her conception of time is tenuous, fluid, changing as rapidly and carelessly as the world around them. 

“How do you think he finds us?” he wonders.

“I don’t know,” Kushina repeats. “You’ll learn more if you ask questions you don’t already know the answer to, y’know.”

Kakashi winces, looking away from his friend.

If she’s his friend — of course she’s his friend, he’s just being dramatic.

“I don’t… know how to make this right,” he whispers.

The kitchen quiets. The great wind spirit sighs, leaning back against her counter and looking down at Kakashi, reminding him of many years ago, when he could hardly manage a physical form taller than her knees.

Being around Kushina always makes him feel young.

“The war took a lot from us,” she says, voice softer than he has any right to. “But if you want to live, then you have to change.”

 

There is a way prayer sounds like music.

Kakashi leans against the temple wall, listening to the monks of Kasai greet dawn. The young lightning spirit closes his eye, remembering: Rin would love this, wouldn’t she? Standing close but not quite with the mortal living, noting the gentle changes in traditions that only soften over centuries. Obito was always the one to drag them inside the Temple, giggling, as if the old monks couldn’t spot the immortal mouthing prayer like secrets.

Kakashi tilts his head up, letting the sun hit his cheeks.

“Kakashi.”

It’s his name as he’s never heard it before: startled, affectionate, angry. The young spirit opens his eyes and then smiles, awkward and unsure.

“Hi Gai.”

Gai’s head is freshly shaved, drawing attention to the thick pair of eyebrows knit over his deep brown eyes. “What are you doing here?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder at the Temple grounds, now full of loud, chattering men in groups of three or four. Only one monk stands alone, leaning against a long staff and staring off towards the gates, half watching Gai and Kakashi.

Kakashi turns away, trying to dismiss the prickling feeling of being seen. After centuries alone, crowds are overwhelming — though not as overwhelming as getting this wrong.

“I wanted to…” Kakashi trails off. He’s practiced the words over and over again in his head, but never aloud. “I want to apologize.”

Gai’s stance softens, until very gently, he smiles.

“How unexpected of you, Rival.”

Kakashi shrugs. He has a whole speech prepared about humans and spirits, life and death, a decade’s worth of explanation and apology… but instead he shrugs.

Even this old, he’s never been very good at honesty.

“Deep emotions are nothing to be ashamed of,” Gai prompts.

“Maybe your emotion, Gai, but I’m…” there are no words. To describe fully how one feels when all the world is gray, all hope and thought muted and broken. Language fails to encompass that vast fight for feeling, but maybe, language is saved by a gentle monk, insisting, _there is nothing to be ashamed of._

Kakashi straightens, looking directly at Gai. “Whatever I am, it doesn’t justify hurting you, someone who is precious to me.”

Tears well in the corner of Gai’s eyes.

“Kakashi,” he answers. “You truly are a splendid spirit. I know you are a fierce fighter and if I — If I could, I would be your rival in a thousand lifetimes.”

“Well… if anyone could manage it, it’d be you, Gai,” Kakashi answers, and then, surprising himself more than Gai, a warm smile breaks across his face, reaching and crinkling his dark eye. “I’m proud of you, Gai,” he clears his throat. “You’ve grown so much over the years and… I’m lucky. To consider you my rival.”

Gai sniffs, and for a moment Kakashi truly believes Gai might be trying to hold back his feelings back until his friend rushes forward all at once, smashing his face against the spirit’s chest and clinging tight as if this is one of their challenges.

At any other time, Kakashi might pretend to be embarrassed, but he’s missed Gai fiercely and so he clings back just as tightly: if their friendship is a challenge, then it is a challenge Kakashi intends to win.

“You’ll always be my rival, I swear it!” Gai shouts, mostly into Kakashi’s shirt. He’s taller, more solid than he’s ever been: Kakashi is going to have to modify his height again to keep up. 

“I know,” Kakashi answers, laughing softly, the sound echoing light and warm in his chest. “I swear it, too.”

 

Gai dies, of course.

Don’t act so surprised. You’ve already seen him die once before: blurry eyed, bleeding, a little less happy than he appeared for the sake of his rival — but only a little less. Kakashi, for better or worse, is worth dying for, in some lives more than others.

Kakashi doesn’t take the death well. It comes early, in summer, which used to Kakashi’s favorite season: Gai is only thirty-one, and the circumstances are never quite explained well enough for Kakashi, who would have preferred to be there, who would have liked to be there, as if that could have saved anyone.

Gai is only human after all, and so he dies.

 

But our rivals promised each other a lifetime, and so we have this:

A beginning, and not an end.


	2. Healing and Life

##### PART TWO: HEALING

 

Over sixty years pass between then and now. You can imagine how Kakashi fills them: it’s not interesting, exciting, pleasant or worth retelling, but if it matters to you, remember: even the very sad can’t be sad all the time. 

This morning is better than most. The autumn colors are beautiful, deep gold and a bright scarlet that matches Kakashi’s stolen eye. Our young lightning spirit is in motion: elegantly running through kata exercises, noting the pressure of his bones and the curve of his muscle, ensuring his body still remembers the shape of itself. 

A flash of green — Kakashi stumbles.

“No,” he whispers.

It’s wrong. _He’s_ wrong. Nightmares are suppose to stay imprisoned in the night — it’s promised in their name, their nature — and yet this nightmare stands boldly before him, basking beneath the light of day.

_Gai._

It’s his friend: fragile, mortal and calloused-palmed, dead, _long_ dead except now alive and twenty years younger than when Kakashi saw him last.

“No,” he repeats, stronger, the word ripping from his chest like a wound. Kakashi dives forward, lightning crackling through his bones, down his limbs, collecting in his bloodied palms. _“No.”_

“Kakashi!” the nightmare shouts in Gai’s voice, diving left and grabbing Kakashi’s arm in the same motion with more strength than any normal boy would have — except this isn’t a normal boy. This is Gai. Back from the dead. Back to haunt him, too.

_Not him,_ Kakashi pleads. _Not him, too._

“Get away!” he shouts; the lightning is a dangerous white-blue light searing his palm, deadlier than any mortal weapon. Gai’s eyes widen, but more than fear there is grief, his eyes shining and then overflowing with tears.

“I’m sorry, he, I still came because I thought you—"

_It’s not real._ Kakashi promises himself even as it _feels_ real. His chest aches as if this is really his friend, as if this is Gai, alive and trembling instead of dead and still and long, long made ashes.

“Get away,” he repeats, but his voice is softer, choked for air.

“I’m sorry,” Gai repeats as he backs away, eyes on Kakashi’s face and not the dangerous weapon in his palms. 

Kakashi’s lightning falters and fades. He can’t breathe. He knows the correct course of action is to pursue this nightmare — to end it, _kill it_ , while it’s still within reach — but at this moment his body is no longer connected to the logic of his mind.

He can only watch as apparition flees into the forest: its disappearance does not return his breath. Does not make him feel safe or whole or alive.

 

Kakashi pushes around dirt with the tip of his toes. Several weeks have passed since he encountered the ghost that looked like Gai, and since then, he’s only felt more restless, as if every sunny meadow threatens to carry its own fresh ghost.

Kushina’s company isn’t helping. She always talks too much when she’s nervous, and she’s been nervous since he first showed up, too pale and disquiet to be easy company. Kakashi could handle her chattiness, maybe even be comforted by it, if she would only shut up about Uchiha Mikoto.

“Are you certain you should be sharing this?” he interrupts.

Kushina halts mid-breath in her elaborate praise of her friend’s new technique, but then leans in close, frowning at him as if examining a physical wound. “Are the Uchihas bothering you again?”

Kakashi’s face feels hot beneath his mask. He firmly looks away, staring instead at the pattern he’s made in the dirt.

“No.”

“Because if they are, Minato can—”

“I’m fine.”

Kushina lets out a messy sigh.

“You haven’t been much fun lately, y’know.”

“Sorry,” he says, thinking of Gai, or the ghost that looks like Gai, with the same tears and choked up voice. Then he looks to Kushina. “Are any of the seals broken? At the forest’s border.”

Kushina’s eyes narrow, gaining a particularly intent and predatory gleam.

“You haven’t cared about the seals in centuries, Kakashi,” she points out. “In fact… you’ve only ridiculed the border since retiring as a Guardian.”

“I help with incense collection.”

“Out of fondness for me, not for the Guardianship, y’know.”

Kakashi can’t deny her accusation without lying, but he tries anyway, faking a smile.

“I’m just curious,” he shrugs.

Kushina raises an eyebrow, but shrugs in return.

“No,” she answers. “They’re all functioning, except… one was damaged. In the East, near the Missing Lands.”

Kakashi frowns. There’s only one Missing Land that would have Kushina looking so cautious, face heavy with hidden grief.

“The Island of Whirlpools?”

Kushina nods tightly.

Her news is disturbing, but it fails to explain his new ghost.

 

Kakashi decides there’s only one logical way to settle his problem: by going directly to its source.

Or in this case, its grave.

There is no body resting here. Only _Maito Gai_ carved in black characters, aged ink still stark against the pale memorial stone. When Gai died, he was hastily cremated, his ashes scattered to the earth.

Though Kakashi had missed his friend’s funeral, when the news of Gai’s death finally reached him the young lightning spirit had gathered up a bundle of shion flowers to be offered at the Temple in Gai’s name. 

Kakashi used to visit the cemetery each Spring, enough times to notice the flow of time, year after year, decade after decade: until one storming day, soaked in water, he had been forced to consider how very sad his grief would make Gai. Gai, who would no doubt consider such a prolong mourning a horrible waste of youth. A loving man like Gai would want Kakashi to change — to be with the living, not the dead.

“But I can’t abandon you,” he whispers.

Behind him, something hard clatters against stone. Kakashi scrambles to his feet, eyes first on a dropped broom, then up to a short, wide-eyed nightmare.

_“You.”_

“Kakashi!” the ghost of Gai shouts.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, too shocked to feel successful.

“Sweeping! It’s part of my sacred temple duties!” Gai exclaims, as if initiates sweeping is common religious knowledge for reclusive lightning spirits.

“But this is your grave,” Kakashi insists, gesturing towards the white memorial stone. Gai looks towards the stone, eyes growing huge and dark.

_“My what?”_

Kakashi’s frown is fierce beneath his mask. What kind of ghost doesn’t know where their own spirit rests?

“Who are you?” he demands. “What are you?”

Gai scrambles to pick up the broom, clutching the staff tightly in his fist, out of fear or nerves, it’s hard to say. This isn’t _his_ Gai — the one Kakashi knew and valued and would have done anything to understand, to protect.

“I’m your rival!” 

The cemetery is silent save for their sharp breaths, the day gentle and beautiful in its unusual warmth, its sunlight and shadow.

“You died,” Kakashi says, voice cracking.

It’s a truth he has not had to speak for many years.

“I did,” The ghost — _Gai?_ — answers. He hesitates, and then softly, lets his grip loosen on the broom, his gaze steady as it meets Kakashi’s, even as his eyes glisten with tears. “I did.”

 

They sit on the ground, close but not quite touching. Kakashi keeps pressing his hands against his knees, lightning trembling beneath his skin. 

Kakashi is still old yet young, and Maito Gai is sixteen, half the age of when Kakashi last saw him, just weeks before his dying and death.

“The Temple believes in reincarnation,” Gai starts, frowning at the high cemetery wall. “But usually not into the same body, the same name.”

Kakashi inclines his head. It’s nothing new, nothing he himself does not believe in. Humans and spirits are not all that different at their bones. 

“When I was living in the capital, I heard tales of extraordinary monks! Valiant men who learned to best the cycle of life and death,” Gai’s voice is bright and animated, even as tears build again at the edge of his dark eyes. “They say my own master, Lord Chen, learned the secret to immortality after defeating a great, evil spirit in battle.”

The great myth of immortal life, gifted upon the defeat a terrible spirit. Kakashi scoffs.

“Is that why you sought me out?”

“I didn’t think you were _evil_!” Gai protests, face a sudden and bright red. Kakashi hides a smile: for a moment it’s so like _his_ Gai that it hurts, a sharp pain running up his spine and across his heart. 

“Besides,” Gai continues, a bit quieter than before. “The myth of Lord Chen is taught as a curse, not a blessing.”

It had never stopped Gai from exalting his teacher: speaking of his great talent and wisdom, working to become more and more like him as an initiate and as a monk.

“You knew,” Kakashi scowls. “You knew you’d come back.”

Gai shakes his head.

“I wasn’t certain.”

“You hoped.”

Kakashi — he hadn’t even had that.

“Soldiers killed my father,” Gai answers, voice harsh even as tears run down his face. “They beat him terribly with their bare hands and our own furniture, kept beating him even when they knew he would die because it gave them pleasure. So I’ve always hoped! Hoped that I could be as strong, _stronger_ , than him.”

It's not an easy tale to hear. Kakashi can remember Gai, _his Gai_ , constantly speaking of youth, of strength and honor and protection, even to his lazy, immortal rival.

But his Gai had never grown old. Instead, he had died.

Whoever this is, it can’t be the same boy, the same man.

“Well,” Kakashi answers, sharp. “You got your wish.”

Gai turns to face Kakashi, but he doesn’t seem surprised by Kakashi’s meanness.

“I kept my promise.”

Despite his tears, his voice carries strongly. The boy sits a little straighter, finally meeting Kakashi’s gaze.

“I’m not immortal, but I… I’m your rival! In this and every lifetime, I’ll always be your rival.”

It’s a promise. A promise to understand him, to protect him and see him through both grief and joy. It’s a promise Kakashi has heard before, but never seen kept. Kakashi’s breath catches in his throat: the longer he looks, the harder it is to separate this young monk from the man he knew sixty years ago.

Gai kept so much from him, but then so did Kakashi.

They hadn’t had much time together, and even now Gai isn’t promising forever — but he isn’t allowing Kakashi be alone.

With the dead. With the buried.

“We’re eternal rivals, aren’t we?” Kakashi asks, voice soft and cracking.

The embarrassment of the question is worth Gai’s sudden, overwhelming smile, brighter through his tears, so startlingly handsome and familiar and _alive_.

 

"And you’re sure it's not Gai's next cycle, y’know?" Kushina asks, crouching to place a hand on top of Gai’s neatly shaved head, measuring his height against her stature. 

“Humans don’t have elemental cycles,” Uchiha Mikoto pipes up, smirking over her teacup. “They reproduce by having sex.”

Kakashi looks pointedly towards the sky while Kushina looks absolutely delighted.

“That’s so _fun!_ ”

Visiting Kushina had been Gai’s idea, and so Kakashi is blaming them both for Kushina’s poor taste in friends. Mikoto, white skinned and dark haired, sleek as a raven, sits regal and unperturbed as she takes in the sight of an immortal monk and his odd company. Her eyes are pure black, hiding her clan’s infamous Sharigan; Kakashi isn’t settled by her peaceful demeanor. Mikoto is just as dangerous as Minato or Kushina — but hardly a friend to a thief like Kakashi.

“How do spirits reproduce?” Gai asks, looking bright, full of all the extra energy that only Kushina’s terrible, terrible cooking can bring.

“Even when we have pacts with trees or animals or the land, at our heart we’re all made up of a basic element, y’know,” Kushina explains, pointing to her fox ears, which seem especially glossy in the summer sunshine. “We can’t die of sickness or old age, but if we’re unwillingly killed then we’re reincarnated as the next spiritual element, water to fire, fire to wind, etcetera,” Kushina shrugs. “But you usually look _a bit_ different.”

Kakashi tugs at his mask. Mikoto is quiet but he can feel her heavy stare — almost worse than the pointed questions her partner never loses the opportunity to raise.

_Do you see Minato often? What do you do with your days, now that you’re not a Guardian? I’m just curious — why a lightning spirit feels so attached to the Land of Fire._

Mikoto might, on the surface, be better than most of her clansmen — but she’s still an Uchiha. There’s no doubt in Kakashi’s mind that she resents him for his part in Obito’s fate.

“Have you had very many challenges?” Kushina asks, sitting back down at her outdoor table, a slightly charred tree trunk Minato helped smooth out all those centuries ago. Kakashi stays stubbornly standing, intent on keeping some distance between himself and Mikoto.

It’s a foolish instinct, of course: a fight at distance would be favorable to the powerful fire spirit, whose ranged attacks are as beautiful as they are formidable. 

Gai shrugs broadly. “Oh yes, plenty!” he grins. “There was the challenge to see who could clean the Temple gates quickest, the challenge to see who could carry the most of pallets of hay, the challenge to see who could find the very best ramen in the village…”

“Konoha?” Kushina interrupts. “You haven’t been back there since Rin—”

The name hangs heavy, cut off in the heady summer air; Kushina looks as if she’d like to stuff the single syllable back in her mouth.

Kakashi forces a smile.

“I know.”

“Well it’s been long enough that he had no idea where anything was,” Gai continues, voice returning some of the warmth of the afternoon. “Did you know my Kakashi had never seen an indoor bath?”

 

Kakashi doesn’t quite understand how, but they’re each carrying six buckets of water. The path from the river to Konoha winds through younger trees than those of the holy forest, but there are still plenty of roots and rock to trip up an especially proud spirit — or mortal. Gai chats happily all the while, unconcerned and unthreatened even as Kakashi carefully keeps his back arched, eyes down.

It’s easier this way, too, to ignore the pressure of so many humans passing by them.

“The pipes break, from time to time,” Gai explains. “Even the Great Yellow Flash cannot keep his magnificent eyes on every inch of the village!”

Kakashi hums. He wonders what his friend would make of the Great Yellow Flash if he was to meet the spirit in person — they’d probably get along marvelously, just like Kushina.

Or… maybe they’d argue about Minato’s inattention to underground pipes.

“I don’t see many worshipers at the Temple,” Kakashi says cautiously. Kasai Temple was once adorned with gold, jewels, and rich offerings, but over the years that had all dulled and faded. Nearly a mile’s walk up a steep mountainside — nothing for Gai, a great burden for others — even the reclusive Kakashi wasn’t blind to the drop in all but the most determined worshipers.

“It’s the new Daimyō,” Gai answers, shrugging widely, as if he’s not balancing two buckets of water upon each shoulder. “He does not encourage the same faith in spirits as his ancestors, but then, he lives in the city, far from the spirits and their splendid countryside!”

Kakashi strains to remember the structure of human politics. Before Gai, he barely gave thought to mortals and their affairs — that burden was for Minato and the clan heads, all native born to the Land of Fire, bound by that fact to protect their people and faith.

“Yet the Temple still looks after the village, even though the village does not look after them?”

“Of course! Who would look after the village, if not us?”

Kakashi’s frown deepens, but as is often the case these days, he finds it impossible to argue against Gai’s logic. He sighs and looks up from the road, glancing left at his friend. If not for Gai’s relentless logic, Kakashi would not be here, carrying buckets of clean water for a hospital that hadn’t mattered to him since a long-settled war.

“A friend… Rin… used to say the same thing.”

Gai smiles.

“You miss her.”

Kakashi’s chest feels heavy. He tries to remember Rin’s laugh, but can only recall the way she looked, how her teeth sat a bit crooked in her mouth and how her lips would wobble right before she lost control of a smile.

“Yes,” he answers. “I do.”

“Kushina said spirits are reborn in cycles,” Gai says. Kakashi hums, hearing his unspoken question.

_Where’s your dear friend, if not here?_

“Even when we’re reborn, we lose parts of ourselves,” he answers. “Echoes may be passed on but never a whole.” It’s why most spirits change their names and looks with each cycle, referring to their former lives as parents or ancestors: stories, rather than memories. “Some aren’t allowed to be reborn. We’re punished with permanent death if we break pacts with our clan, or tether ourselves to objects on earth... or if we kill ourselves.”

Gai is quiet. Kakashi looks towards him, afraid he’s frightened his mortal friend. Instead, he sees that Gai is crying. A sharp pressure pushes through Kakashi’s ribs, threatening his heart.

“You miss your old friends,” Kakashi says. “Your family.”

An entire lifetime, a half century gone… Of course Gai has parts of himself to grieve in this new lifetime.

“How… How do you bear it, rival?”

For a moment, only the sound of sloshing water and their footsteps on the path fill the silence. It’s hard to believe that in this life they have almost a decade of renewed friendship, after Kakashi believed he had lost everything once more.

“I don’t know,” he finally answers, honest, the buckets of water weighing down his shoulders and head. “But your friendship… it makes bearing it easier.” 

 

They carry the water to and from the hospital for a week, but even after the pipes are fixed, there always seems to be a task to keep them busy.

Kakashi doesn’t always come along to help Gai — and more often than not, is hardly helping unless he’s challenged by Gai to do so — but he likes seeing the way the villagers treat his friend. The monks at Kasai Temple have such rigid ideas around age and hierarchy, but here Gai is welcome without apology. No one seems to find Gai’s boisterous attitude embarrassing or overwhelming, in fact, many young nurses blush in Gai’s company, a fact his friend finds charming rather than intriguing.

“Of course I notice their radiant beauty!” Gai laughs. “But there’s hardly anyone in Konoha who would be worth leaving the Temple for.”

His gaze seems to linger on Kakashi a moment too long: the lightning sprit frowns, confused, unsettled… until Gai laughs, returning to his work and allowing the moment to pass unremarked.

“Some monks begin handsome families after leaving the Temple service,” Gai explains, hands busy filling small jars with a green potion brewed by a student of the hospital’s head nurse. “But there’s so much magnificence in world to explore… I can’t imagine settling for less than all of it!”

Kakashi smiles.

“What’s the Land of Wind like now?” he asks, knowing that in his second life Gai was born there, traveling to Konoha only for Kasai Temple and the strange spirits who surround it. It’s soothing to hear Gai enthusiastically describe the towering sand dunes, the spiced, acidic food and the small inn where his parents make their money. It doesn’t seem to matter to Gai that his family is different than the single father of his previous life: all that counts is that he’s had the chance to know them, and they him.

“I love them,” he declares, and for just a moment, the strange weight returns to his eyes as he looks across the table at Kakashi. “They belong to me, and I to them! Isn't that marvelous?”

 

“Hatake?”

Kakashi tenses, quickly looking away from the hospital cabinet, his arms swaddled in wool blankets. It hardly feels like a protective shield against Uchiha Fugaku’s burning gaze, which flashes blood red before hastily returning to a human guise of brown.

“What are you doing here?” he demands.

“Fetching blankets,” Kakashi answers mildly.

Mikoto stands just behind her partner. She lightly sets her hand on his arm, as if threatening to restrain Fugaku physically from his own temper.

“Kakashi is a friend of the Kasai Monk, Maito Gai,” she says, voice quiet but hardly soft. Warmly, she offers Kakashi the smallest of smiles. “Like us, he cares for this village.”

Fugaku scowls. It’s strange to see the clan head, and his partner, pretending to be dull and human, though only luck has prevented Kakashi from running into them in Konoha before now. While few spirits bother with the wellbeing of mortals, Konoha is frequently visited by Uchihas. They consider the town under their protection: as the eldest of the fire spirit clans, they are imbued into the very myth of its creation, worshiped in home alters like gods.

Obito had found the whole thing hilarious… but Fugaku had never been a man blessed with a decent sense of humor. His face does not so much soften as relax into a hard mask.

“As long as this village is easy to care for, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Kakashi answers, gripping his shield of blankets tighter. Kakashi doesn’t want to start a fight near vulnerable humans, so instead he calculates how long a firmly tossed blanket would blind the head of the Uchiha clan.

His calculations are bleak, but not hopeless.

“Come now,” Mikoto says, eyes sparkling with laughter and something sharper — something dangerous. The three spirts are standing alone in the hospital hallway, but privacy is rarely granted for long in a village as crowded as Konoha. “The new Daimyō is hardly Kakashi’s fault.”

Fugaku glances at his partner, then back towards Kakashi. Despite the difference in the two Uchichas’ looks and mannerisms, there’s something seamless about the pair, a connection Kakashi could never hope to rival.

For a moment — a part of him feels empty, raw.

“For your human’s sake,” Fugaku warns. “I hope you are a better friend now than you were to Obito.”

The words are meant to wound. Instead, they reach deeper: Kakashi feels the grief inside him puncture and lighten — still present, but hardly a crushing weight against his ribs. _Fugaku is right,_ Kakashi realizes with no little amount of wonder. Kakashi is a better friend now, one more capable and present than he ever was for Obito — or even Rin.

He thinks of Gai, smiling, _they belong to me._

Today Kakashi cares not just for himself and those closest to him, but for an entire village.

The lightning spirit smiles wide enough for the expression to crinkle both eyes.

“Lord Uchiha… Once again, your clan humbles me.”

 

From a safe distance, Kakashi watches Kasai Temple bustle with warm life: already busy with monks and their visitors, alert and moving quickly despite the day’s cold. He sinks deeper into his green scarf, wishing that he hadn’t had the misplaced idea that it would be funny to be timely, for once.

“Sorry!” booms a welcome voice. Gai’s shining, shaved head comes up over the ridge, sweat gleaming on his dark face. “I will do four hundred push-ups to make up for your waiting!”

“Please, not now,” Kakashi says, holding out a pale hand in faint protest. Gai laughs but does not immediately drop to the ground in plank position.

“Of course not! We have a great and noble challenge to complete first!”

Kakashi frowns, narrowing his gray eye.

“It’s not like you, to be late.”

Gai’s smile fades as he glances, once, over his shoulder. It’s easy to mistake Gai’s upbeat and loud personality for ignorance, but Kakashi knows few who are as quick and careful with their observations. 

“This isn’t a safe place to speak,” Gai answers, voice grave. “There are powerful visitors from the capital and I do not—” he cuts himself off, hastily reconsidering what he wants to share. “I do not know how they’d react to you,” he finishes.

Kakashi, too, glances behind them. The lightning spirit had noticed the unusual amount of activity at the Temple this afternoon, but had assumed he had simply forgotten a holiday, as he was wont to do.

For an immortal spirit, time always passes strangely.

“They upset you,” Kakashi says bluntly, following his friend into the woods. Gai is confident on the uneven trail, but without his usual smile, the long lines around his eyes and mouth are painfully deep and visible.

Kakashi realizes, uneasily, that Gai is nearly thirty: only seasons away from the age when Kakashi first lost him more than half a century ago.

“Kakashi,” Gai begins. “Do spirits ever go to war?”

Kakashi is quiet for a long while.

“Rarely,” he answers. “But when we do… it is terrible.”

Gai looks to him. His eyes are gleaming and for a moment — for a great and awful moment, Kakashi fears that Gai understands his loss, his great and unyielding grief, without Kakashi having to say a word.

Kakashi looks away.

“The state is demanding soldiers,” Gai says quietly. “The Temple is famous for our mastery of kung fu, but the Daimyō does not understand that we train our bodies to protect — not to kill!”

Emotion pushes Gai to quicken his pace. Kakashi’s eyes follow him, admiring. Gai’s body is… beautiful. He’s worked hard to make it strong and masculine, fighting in two lifetimes against those who called him weak while mistaking him for a woman. Like Kakashi, Gai was born with breasts and will never know the weight of a penis between his legs, but unlike Kakashi, he’s had to argue against every mortal’s interpretation of gender and beauty.

At least when Kakashi chose his own form, it was without pain or judgement.

He forgets, often, that just because Gai loves himself and his body loudly, it does not preclude a constant struggle for its freedom.

“To protect those you admire…” Kakashi cautions. “You may be forced to kill those that send you towards harm.”

Gai’s hands curl into heavy, dangerous fists.

“So I kill the Daimyō?” he demands. “Allow the hateful cycle of war and retribution to land upon Kasai Temple? Upon the people of Konoha? When has killing ever benefited peaceful people?”

Kakashi hesitates. He is remembering the way Gai’s voice broke in the cemetery as he shared how soldiers killed his father. At the time, it hadn’t mattered to Kakashi what the reason could have been. What nation the soldiers belonged to. Kakashi was a solider himself: he had wanted to believe the reason was just, even if it was ugly.

“You’ve never told me why you joined the Temple,” Kakashi says quietly.

Gai looks startled. His thoughts are clearly elsewhere, maybe already at borders built by human hands.

It already seems certain, then: that within weeks Gai will leave. That within months he will be dead.

“Yes, I did,” Gai protests, slowing to a stop at the edge of a cold meadow. “It was to find you.”

Kakashi shakes his head. “I don’t mean in this lifetime. I mean, in your past life… your first life.”

Gai hesitates and then laughs, the sound hard and round; it leaves behind a tired smile, his eyes full of… _too much_ as he looks at Kakashi.

“My father was a brilliant, tireless man,” Gai recalls, voice full of soft wonder. “He refused to take offense to people’s prejudice, even when they looked down at him for being foreign, from the West instead of any of the great nations and their borders.” Gai’s expression grows harder, more pained than Kakashi has ever seen him. “When the soldiers came for us… when he protected me but not himself against their horrible hatred and fear… I knew I could no longer stay in the capital. That I had make my own way. Prove to my father, to myself, that I could be worthy of his brave legacy.” When he smiles, it is aching. Kakashi feels something wretch within his chest, and so softly, he presses his hand against Gai’s.

His friend’s smile turns softer, and when he continues, his voice is stronger than before.

“I left my home, made my way to the fire temple and stood outside their gates for eight nights and days — and that final morning, they were convinced to train me despite my older age. The monks gave me shelter, knowledge, the ability to protect myself and others! It was everything I thought I needed until…” he swallows, hand curling around Kakashi’s fingertips. “I found you.”

All around them, the forest seems to be pressing in, pushing brutal against Kakashi’s skin. He swiftly pulls his hand away, pressing it against his thigh.

“Gai…” Kakashi begins — and though he can go no further, Gai seems to understand.

“All suffering is based in desire,” Gai recites, maybe for himself as much as Kakashi. “I should know better than most. Desire… has cursed me, hasn’t it?”

Kakashi doesn’t know. He looks away, towards the dappled shadows of the cold forest. Too much is changing in the Land of Fire, between spirits and their ghosts, between men and their pasts, and Kakashi… Kakashi doesn’t know if ignoring desire has ever made one safe from it.

 

##### PART THREE: LIFE

 

On bright summer days, when the whole world feels just as lazy as Kakashi, the young lightning spirit nestles in the crook of his favorite cedar tree. He lets the sun splash against his face and warm his limbs, drifting from daydream to daydream. 

Lately, his favorite story has been about Gai, Gai growing old and falling in love with a beautiful woman.

At first the beautiful woman has thick breasts, though eventually Kakashi tones them down, figuring Gai would prefer someone balanced and less top heavy to toss around in battle. She’ll have to be a fighter, of course, someone who can laugh as easily as Gai in the fearsome face of hardship.

They’ll have two, no three, children, a girl and two boys. One boy will be pretentious and easily embarrassed by Gai’s exuberance, but the younger son will always adore his father, looking up to Gai as if the whole world rests atop his bushy eyebrows. The daughter will be stubborn and clear-sighted, knowing to watch for her father’s limits. All three children will grow up kind and strong, fighting over who gets to take care of Gai and his wife when they’re old but no less exuberant.

And never, not for a moment in Kakashi’s dreams, does Gai look back at the forest, longing for things that could never be.


	3. Pain and Limit

##### PART FOUR: PAIN

 

Kakashi holds a pile of sparkling pebbles in his hands, squinting impatiently at the sky to determine exactly what hour it is.

“I’ve promised to meet Gai soon,” he says, already knowing he’ll be late. He can’t bring himself to be thrilled about teaching the young monk how to dodge lightning, but after Gai’s last lifetime… it’s become harder to deny what makes his friends stronger.

“Gai’s returned?” Kushina asks, pausing in her work. Kakashi nods, small, as if it hasn’t been well over a century since Gai’s passing in a distant war.

At least human conflict ends quickly. The lands of earth and fire are once again at peace — as long as it satisfies their leaders.

“Hmm,” Kushina hums, face scrunched in thought. “Fifty years… then a century. Do you suppose next time it’ll be a hundred and fifty years between his next cycle, or an even two hundred?”

“Well…” he says. His mind stalls, unable to put itself to the task of considering Gai’s death, no matter how expected and natural it must be. He blinks. He’s never known his mind to be a coward before. “I’ve never know Gai to be predictable.”

Kushina laughs, bending into the river currents, lightly sifting through silt for the bits of gold that will strengthen the base of her clan’s ancient spells. Kakashi lazily kicks his feet in the slow river water. Kushina’s fox tail flicks off a bit of stray spray, mostly in his direction.

“How many cycles does he have?”

“Hm?”

“Gai,” Kushina’s stops once more, resting her wet palms on her long, green dress, gathered in a knot just above her knees. “Will he go on living forever, or… reach a limit, y’know?”

Kakashi frowns.

“He claims he has eight lives,” Kakashi says. One for each of the original matches he defeated Kakashi in, as if Kakashi is really an immortal of such cursed renown. “I guess… this is his third cycle.”

Kushina sighs, turning to stomp her way to the riverside and flop down beside her friend. For a moment, they both enjoy the strength of the summer sun.

“It must hurt, to lose him,” she offers.

Kushina is unique. Like Sakumo, she knew first knew Kakashi’s as his previous incarnation. Loved him before Kakashi even knew how to like himself, how to like others.

With Sakumo long dead, she’s now the only one remaining who can speak to him so gently.

“We have time,” Kakashi answers, quiet but fierce.

He’s changed. He’s stronger now: for his friends. For Gai.

 

They lie panting on the grass, too beat up to move. Gai’s challenges are…

Not easy, anymore.

Gai props himself up with perfect posture, his breath returning. He’s long ago sprouted past Kakashi’s favored height and every year seems to be bulkier. When do humans stop growing? He’s forgotten Gai’s age — something as small as years are difficult for self-centered spirits to keep track of — but he must be somewhere in his twenties by now.

Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Twenty-seven?

“I have to be going,” Gai says, almost apologetically. Kakashi makes a noise of assent, not bothering to move. These past years, Gai’s visits have become shorter and rarer: it’s only to be expected. As a fully ordained monk, Gai has real responsibility now. Kakashi is proud of him… but suddenly, his absence illuminates just how much free time Kakashi has to fill.

Gai leans over Kakashi’s limp body, forcing his face into view. He’s wearing something suspiciously like a smile, so Kakashi stubbornly turns his head away, looking towards the tree line.

His rival chuckles and softly, a gentle, callous touch traces his jawline. Kakashi tenses, pressing his fingertips against the warm grass, holding his head painfully still.

Gai coughs, hastily withdrawing his hand.

“Right!” he exclaims, leaping to his feet. “I should, I have to get going! And if I’m not early, I’ll take five hundred, _no,_ a thousand laps around the Temple!”

Kakashi feels a weight pressing upon his chest — even as he feels relief, too.

Either way, the lightning spirit doesn’t ask Gai to stay.

 

The kunai slams into the tree bark and then disappears with a violent fizzle. Kakashi ignores the sound and the knife and the near loss of his left ear, raising a hand in lazy greeting.

“Yo.”

Minato is already grinning.

“Kakashi,” he answers. The kunai has already returned to his hand, sizzling with small wisps of smoke and ember. “Rare to see you out.”

Kakashi shrugs. He knows it’s been a while, decades if not centuries since he’s been this close to the border, but the rocky landscape at the forest’s edge feels unchanged, deadly in its cold familiarity.

“Kushina said you might have some work for me to do.”

Minato’s eyes spark.

“Really?” he asks. “It’s been a while since you’ve helped with seals.”

“Well… I’m looking for a change in pace,” Kakashi answers, willing his friend not to ask anything more of him.

Minato must be gossiping with Kushina because he lets the vague answer go. He motions Kakashi forward, crouching near a small circle that’s carved into the rockface. Kakashi recognizes the simple lines as the first layer of the border spells, designed to keep out corrupt and wild spirits, innocent enough when compared to the rest of the mess that the Guardianship claims to stand for.

“Hiruzen came by recently,” Minato explains. “As you’ve heard, we’ve had some problems with the eastern seals again. He brought a few suggestions for how to fix them.”

Kakashi hums. “The old lord is still alive?”

Minato laughs bright as his sunshine yellow hair.

“Alive and well enough to kick your ass if he heard you speaking that way,” he grins.

For all his power as the Land of Fire’s Chief Guardian, his friend hardly looks intimidating. Minato is young, bright, and smiling with far more ease than when they first met, all those centuries ago beside the ruins of the Island of Whirlpools.

War has made him sharper, but loss has made him kinder.

“If you’re concerned for the eastern spells, then why are you so far north?” 

Minato stands, brushing non-existent dirt from his white coat. Kakashi follows, eyes narrowed.

“You don’t believe it’s a wild spirit acting alone, do you?”

Minato grins, clapping a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder.

“Come,” he says. “If you still want to help, then we have a long day ahead of us.”

 

The old tree is just beginning to lose its leaves, though the fall weather is already cool enough to keep most people indoors. Yet Kakashi and Gai have never struck anyone as usual, and so the pair happily divides their small picnic equally among themselves.

“Lord Hashirama isn’t real,” Kakashi protests, pulling his mask up over his nose and chewing on a rice ball in one corner of his mouth.

“Then how do you explain Konoha?” Gai exclaims. “Or any of the five great villages, set into places so marvelously dangerous they’d never survive without the blessings of the great spirits!”

“Have you ever seen a giant turtle? Or a monstrous fox?”

“I’ve seen Kushina,” Gai grins.

Kakashi shakes his head. As if his friend could be one of the nine great spirits, ancient beasts who hold the power of all five elements when most spirits have trouble controlling only one. Lord Hashirama is a mythical, human monk famous for taming the beasts — with the help of a great fire spirit, the Uchihas are always quick to add — though Kakashi tends to suspicious of anything the Uchihas take pride in.

“You’re as gullible as Minato,” Kakashi complains.

“You’re just a bitter old man who’s forgotten the joys of youth!” Gai answers.

Kakashi shoves his palm into Gai’s face, pushing him backwards. Gai lets out a strangled squawk but flings his arms out at the last minute, fisting his hands in Kakashi’s shirt to drag him down with him.

Quickly the two are wrestling, lunch forgotten in the joy of the earth as each young man fights to gain the upper hand, kicking and shoving with knees and elbows, forgetting all grace and memory of proper physical technique. The shape of Gai is rough but intensely warm, and though Kakashi loses the precise moment of it, suddenly he’s fighting less to throw Gai off and more to draw Gai closer.

The two become pressed together, a long line of hard limbs splayed against cool dirt, breathing hard and ragged against each other’s mouths.

A long moment passes. Gai’s eyes flicker to the edge of Kakashi’s mask, and then suddenly, his face darkens with a deep blush; Kakashi’s own face and neck feels blotchy with heat. They pull back at the same time, both coughing. Kakashi wildly looks about the deserted park, then snatches up the nearest sandwich.

“Should we finish lunch?”

“Oh, yes!” Gai is staring at a pear as if it’s the most intensely interesting fruit he’s ever had the fortune of encountering. “Yes, first man to finish his lunch — while balancing on his hands — wins!”

Kakashi, more adventurous than ever before, leaps into a precarious handstand without pausing to question if there might be safer distractions from the heated feeling pounding past his chest.

 

The two rivals take the shorter path up to the Temple, one that climbs straight up the mountain rather than cutting back and forth. There’s more distance in-between the rivals than usual, but Gai is talking so animatedly that it takes up most of Kakashi’s attention, and so he almost misses it —

A memorial stone.

Kakashi halts, ignoring Gai as he carries on for a few more steps before realizing he’s missing his walking partner. The monk doubles back, restless over Kakashi’s shoulder.

“There was a terrible fire,” he explains. “It killed nearly all the Temple’s monks. Master Chen said he was lucky to flee it with most of his life.”

There are no names on the stone, simply a date and the small leaf symbol of Konoha. Kakashi brushes his fingertips across it, wondering at how clean it is, despite being so remote. There’s fresh incense and offerings of flowers, too.

This memorial means something to the local people, to Gai.

“A fire,” Kakashi repeats. “Fitting for Kasai Temple.”

There’s a strange quiet, though it takes a long minute before Kakashi looks up, willing to address the odd weight in his friend’s posture.

“I forget sometimes,” Gai mutters, almost to himself.

“Forget what?”

Gai simply shakes his head, eyes shining.

“How you’re not human, rival.”

 

The sun is just peaking over the horizon, though Kakashi imagines the rocky beach would look much better blanketed by darkness. Kakashi yawns, covering his mouth even though his mask already does the job for him. Kushina bumps her nose against his thigh; the wind spirit has taken to her fox guise, fur a dazzling scarlet beneath the light of the rising sun. 

Kakashi nods in answer to her unspoken inquiry.

“It’s in my pack.”

“What is?” Gai asks, because only he would have the energy to be so curious at this hour.

“Sakaki,” he answers. “From the young trees we blessed for Minato.”

Gai looks pleased. Even after a decade of being fully ordained, any talk of religion still has him beaming.

“This seal must be mighty and important!”

Kushina yips, jumping to circle a section of grass and rock at the beach’s edge: her six tails rise and fall with rapid excitement, more akin to the sparks of a fire than the flames themselves. Kakashi throws his hand forward, cautioning Gai back.

“Be careful,” he warns.

With his best eye covered, it takes Kakashi a long minute to make out the impression of the seal in the rocky beach. It’s been a century, but the heart of the protective spell is still in place: long interlacing chains carved into the earth with a power far greater than Kakashi’s.

“This is near enough,” Kakashi declares, dropping the bag of sakaki branches. “Here, help me with the fire.”

Gai kneels beside him to take up the kindling, attending to the task with the same, intense energy that he pours into every aspect of his life. For a moment Kakashi’s gaze lingers — and then he looks to Kushina, watching her carefully circle the intricate seal. Minato has a quicker affinity for such spells — but Kushina’s power is much deeper, unlikely to erode even in the face of the storms that lurk at the eastern border.

This is the site of the original break — the most important hurt to heal.

“The sakaki is ready,” Gai says, voice unusually low. Kakashi inspects his work, and satisfied, ushers in his bright spark of lightning, letting it jump to the kindling. Gai startles, watching wide-eyed as the flame envelopes light bones of wood.

Kushina pauses, sinking onto her front paws with her eyes focused on the seal. Slowly, the air around them begins to stir — faster and faster, moving the faint grit between the uneven rocks, the sour smoke of the fire, the first warm promise of day. The wind circles them — Kushina and Kakashi and Gai and Ocean and Earth and Fire too — then it slices into the ground, drawing out the shape of thick chains, glowing gold under the pressure of an old spirit’s will.

“Wow,” Gai whispers, and then — and then the spell wavers.

The gold flickers, loosening, too much of the heavens. Kushina sinks closer to the ground, dark eyes glinting as she struggles to keep ahold of the spell.

“Kushina,” Kakashi begins, as if naming his friend will help her. The wind howls louder, Kakashi reaches for his lightning but instead is met by a great force, pushing against his chest — unlike a physical blow, there’s no chance to meet it. Kakashi is sent tumbling back, sliding into the sharp rocks and stones of the beach.

The wind grows fiercer, and even so, Kakashi swears he hears the sound of prayer —

He pushes to his knees and presses his hands against the beach, heart battering between an aching spine and aching ribs. _Kushina. Gai._ They won’t be protected from this force alone.

He presses his power into the earth, letting the lighting dance between the stones instead of attempting to traverse the danger of the sand, feeling the power of Kushina’s wind and the violence of the force between them.

_It’s not enough._ Kakashi can feel it, the edges of an old power, maybe even more dangerous and forgotten than Kushina, overwhelming them both —

Then, a cry.

_Gai._

Kakashi looks up, lightning faltering just as the fire enters, shoved in by Gai’s fragile, mortal hands, a foolish instinct and yet — Kushina’s wind gathers up the fuels of ember, growing brighter, even gold, and then with a final howl the great chaos rises and collapses, straight back into the ground.

Kushina stands, trembling, staring at their work.

Gai falters, then collapses.

“Gai!” Kakashi pushes to his feet, wincing and then ignoring the pain of his body. Gai is still, too still, cradling his hands in his lap. _Fool,_ Kakashi wants to say, staring at the mess of red welts and blood that mare Gai’s palms, the damage curling around his fingertips — his hands.

He fights for so much with his hands.

“Are you alright, Kakashi? Kushina?” Gai demands, looking up with gleaming eyes. 

Kakashi nods, kneeling and swiftly taking Gai’s hands in his, moving them gently and forcing himself to inspect the depth of the damage.

_This is his fault. He should have never —_

Kushina, like both of her friends, is ignoring her exhaustion, walking the edge of the seal once more. She’s retained her fox form but is whimpering softly, a mournful sound that curls soft and cold in Kakashi’s chest.

“Something’s still interfering with the seals,” Kakashi says, looking up towards the smoldering, broken chains.

Something not quite alive — not quite dead.

 

That night, the den is quiet. Minato’s pale face is grave, absent of the usual trickster light that marks him as the famed Yellow Flash. Kushina has returned to her more human guise but is listlessly stirring her soup, staring at the untouched bits of onion and tofu. Even Gai is quiet, bandaged palms held gingerly in his lap, Kakashi sitting so close that their bodies are nearly pressed together.

Minato takes in a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he begins. “We didn’t imagine… how dangerous it would be.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Gai insists, voice warm but firm. “You couldn’t know.”

“Couldn’t know?” Kakashi demands, voice bitter and sharp. “This meddling has all the signs of the Missing Lands, we should have known—” Kakashi looks up, gray eye flashing as he looks to his friend and mentor. “ _You_ should have known.”

“Kakashi!” Kushina snaps.

Kakashi looks down, glaring at the wood grain of the table: all he sees are Gai’s hands — burned and bloodied — sitting useless in his lap.

“Excuse me,” Kakashi says, standing abruptly. He hastily crosses the small den to reach outdoors. The sun is just setting, the evening air still humid and warm.

His head and chest are empty, his uncovered eye focused on the violet-blue sky.

_Sakumo, Obito, Rin, Gai._

He feels rather than sees his friend join him, standing close enough for the heat of his body to press through Kakashi’s clothes and skin. Kakashi briefly closes his eye, and then looks to the monk, gingerly taking his nearest hand in his own.

“It’ll heal,” Gai says gently.

“Not fast enough,” Kakashi answers. His rival… he has too much to lose.

Gai takes a step closer, pressing his arm against Kakashi’s. Kakashi leans closer, and for a moment, allows himself to feel something warm without being afraid of it.

 

##### PART FIVE: LIMIT

 

Change comes swiftly. Rarely kindly.

“Kakashi,” Uchiha Mikoto warns, very quiet. “If you don’t move, you’ll die.”

 

The fire begins in the west.

A roar of smoke and ash erupts at the forest edge, as bright as a second sun, staining the sky itself a terrible, ominous red.

Kakashi is on his feet, racing across the grass and scrambling up the tall bolder that sits on the highest edge of the park. Gai is quick behind him, but not nearly as nimble. 

“What is it?” he demands from below.

Kakashi’s eye doesn’t pick out any new details on the horizon, but already, the wind brings the faint scent of burning fur and flesh.

“The forest’s western border is broken,” Kakashi says, voice steady and cool, almost disconnected from the racing heartbeat tearing against his body. “You should go. I have to find Minato.”

“It’s not wise!” Gai shouts. His eyes are wide, his hands tense at his side. “In my last lifetime, at the beach, this terrible beast nearly killed you!”

Kakashi needs to go. Gai doesn’t have a chance of keeping up and this argument is wasting precious time. Though Kakashi is no longer a Guardian, their rules are clear on cowards who dither on emotion in emergency.

Still — for a heartbeat — the lightning spirit looks away from the fire, toward the hidden patch of trees where he knows Konoha lays.

The Guardians’ rules couldn’t care less for mortals.

Kakashi swiftly jumps from his perch, enclosing his friend’s hands in his, squeezing tight. He offers a warm, affectionate smile, wide enough to crinkle both eyes.

_Their rules didn’t save Obito. Their rules didn’t mourn Rin’s death._

“I’m you rival,” he declares. “We promised each a lifetime, I won’t let anything cut that short.”

“Kakashi…” Gai begins, voice exasperated even as it’s fond. “I must warn the monks, they won’t recognize the depth of danger.”

His quiet voice makes it obvious that the Temple is not where he longs to go. 

The lightning spirit squeezes Gai’s hands once, and then lets go.

“I’ll be with Minato,” he promises. “Stay safe. I’ll find you.”

 

If I —

If I had known then, what I know now…

Well. That’s the tragedy that lies at the heart of every story.

We never see the makings of our own undoing.

 

The western edge of the forest is unfamiliar, prickling at Kakashi’s skin. Even before Obito’s death, he always tried to avoid the Uchiha’s land: even now, it feels as if the trees are anything but welcoming. A small ball of blue lightning crackles ahead of him, guiding him through the thickening smoke and rubble. With only his magic as his guide

A body slams into his side, crushing him against the hot ground. Kakashi’s face is pressed into piles of ashes: he slams his arm back, rolling onto his back only to be pinned by a sharp line of searing steel.

“Where are you coming from?” Uchiha Mikoto shouts. Her eyes are blood red marred by a trio of spinning tomoes. Kakashi realizes his mistake as the noise of the blaze cuts to nothing, the world bleeding red and black as the searing pain spreads from his neck to his chest and head and arms until his whole body is ablaze, as if roasted alive in the molten center of the earth.

“I was with Gai!” he screams, caught in the full power of the Sharigan.

Sound and color rush back as suddenly as they left: he realizes his face is wet. Mikoto pulls away, drawing a short blade to her side. She moves to her feet with an easy grace she’s never shown in casual tea dates with Kushina.

“The western seal was broken from inside the border,” Mikoto snaps, apology via explanation rather than remorse. It’s a tact Kakashi is familiar with, so he says nothing, wiping at his eyes. “You can’t trust anyone you meet here.”

Kakashi takes a moment longer to make it to his feet, lightly massaging his neck before realizing the heat of the fire no longer bothers him; Mikoto must have cast a protective spell on his skin.

“You mean don’t trust anyone with a Sharigan?” Kakashi answers, naming the clan’s magic that one can only be born with — or steal.

The western border is under the Uchiha’s protection. There’s no doubt that the Sharigan is used in their spell work, just as in the east Kushina relies on Uzumaki chains.

Mikoto adjusts her grip on the tantō blade, drawing his attention to it once more. 

“You should leave,” she orders. “Suspicion will be cast on you as quickly as it’s cast upon my clan. Danzō would relish in taking any of our eyes, even one as young as Obito’s.”

Kakashi grimaces. The clearing is empty, his tracking spell long gone.

“I need to find Minato.”

Mikoto’s eyes narrow. It does nothing to diminish the Sharigan’s harsh light.

“I’ll stay with you.”

Kakashi can’t tell if it’s a threat or a kindness, but either way, he’s in no position to refuse.

“Alright,” he shrugs, bringing his hands together to gather lightning in his palms once more, closing his eyes and focusing on the energy of his mentor.

 

The further west Kakashi and Mikoto travel, the worst the stench grows. Not just the scent of burning underbrush and animals, but something uglier, something long dead and only freshly uncovered.

Kakashi’s stomach rolls.

The scent is familiar, but without form. A story from a past life, a myth, a terror.

“We’re close,” he whispers to Mikoto. He knows she senses it too: the pure, ill will of a corrupt spirit, poisoning the land and air.

She motions to him with a quick hand sign. It takes a moment for Kakashi to recognize it, but then he nods, pressing his palms together to dismiss his tracking spell. The ball of lightning winks out, leaving them in the strange red-darkness of the burning forest.

Beyond the roar of the blaze, Kakashi hears two voices, shouting to be heard. He follows a step behind Mikoto, stopping when she does, trusting in her sharper sight. Even with the Uchiha’s blessing, the heat is a physical presence, clawing at his skin. It’s dangerous to be this close to a wild blaze: even a fire spirit as powerful as Minato wouldn’t be here by choice. 

So what’s powerful enough to trap him here?

“… tails does not belong to me,” the voice is scratchy and high, grating against Kakashi’s ears. “You’re as foolish as Hiruzen! Desiring to limit nature itself!”

Kakashi lines his body behind a crumbling tree, trying to scout the fight. He sees two figures standing in a desolated meadow, no, not a meadow — the ground is blackened, scattered with uprooted trees.

Their fight did this: destroyed the forest, destroyed the earth. 

“Your war ends here,” Minato says, voice even despite the volume he must shout at. Kakashi’s gaze flickers to the enemy: there’s no reading his reaction. The corrupt spirit appears in a long black robe, a white mask obscuring the entirety of his face.

Both sprits rush towards each another, arms outstretched. Kakashi steps out from the tree, gathering lightning in his palms, ready to support his mentor and friend. A kunai knife glints in the enemy’s hand; a blaze of round, blue light grows from Minato’s. The two meet each other in the clearing’s center — and it's only then that Kakashi sees the blood bright against his mentor’s pale limbs.

Only then, that Kakashi sees how Minato stumbles.

Blinding light fills the clearing. Kakashi yanks the cloth away from his stolen eye, allowing Obito’s Sharigan to pierce through the blindness, focusing on the single figure standing victorious in the clearing’s center: Kakashi's breath stills, his heart slows, as his mismatched eyes strain to recognize who's lost and who’s won.

A red eye turns to meet Kakashi’s: it burns with recognition.

Kakashi blinks.

The figure is gone. 

 

A roar shakes the forest: rising above the tree line, taller and thicker than the most ancient of the oak trees, appears the blood red shadow of a beast:

The horrible, Nine Tailed Fox.

 

“Kakashi,” Uchiha Mikoto warns, very quiet. Her hand presses against his back, a firm pressure resting between his arched shoulders. “If you don’t move, you’ll die.”

All around them a fire blazes, the cry of a great, wild spirit crushing the sounds of living and dead alike. Yet Kakashi can only see red, red and ashes, ashes where his friend and mentor once stood.

Minato is —

Minato was…

“Do no mourn him,” Mikoto reminds him, voice not soft but urgent. “He will return to us, in the next life.”

_I’m sorry,_ Minato had said all those years ago, in the ruins of the last great war. Sakumo’s body had only left behind a shining streak of blood, clean against the steel of his own tantō blade.

Minato had told him the truth, then.

Elemental spirits who die by their own hand will forever end their cycle of death and rebirth.

_Minato, return? When his death had been as quick and pointless as Sakumo’s? As Rin’s?_

Kakashi presses a hand against his uncovered Sharigan, the eye that had once belonged to one of his only friends. He had believed that Obito would return, too. _That had been a lie._ Kakashi feels the heat thick in his lungs, the lightning crackling close to the surface of his skin.

As he stands he looks away the remains of his friend’s final battle, tries to find the hard place within himself that is numb to the limits of grief.

He fails.

“Kushina—"

“I’m going to find her,” Mikoto promises, squeezing his shoulder. Her eyes shine blood red in the light of the fire. “I won’t allow her to fight this beast alone.”

Kakashi nods, forcing himself to trust in the clan that has given him so much pain and hardship. The Uchihas may not like him, but they love this land, would sacrifice anything to save it.

“Then I’ll go to Konoha,” he answers. “The people there… they deserve to be protected.”

 

Kakashi crashes through the underbrush. He has no spell to guide him, relying on instinct to keep him away from the fire and lead him closer to the village of Konoha.

He’s just reached the outer road when a whistling sound slings low through the air: Kakashi is alerted to the location of the kunai knife only by the blurred glint of metal. He dodges, gathering lightning beneath his skin, much quicker after Mikoto’s surprise attack in the woods.

“Pathetic,” the enemy taunts. “Relying on a power that never belonged to you.”

It’s the same masked spirit who killed Minato. His mouth is covered by the white mask, but Kakashi sees mirth dancing in a single, visible red eye. The spirit’s anger and appearance make it obvious he’s an Uchiha, though one in the midst of an elemental cycle that isn’t fire, irises unable to show the characteristic trio of black tomoe.

“This eye is a gift, from a dear friend,” Kakashi answers, voice stronger than he feels.

“You don’t deserve it,” the spirit snarls. “You’ve forgotten the dead.”

The spirit’s body fades from black to smoky gray. Kakashi throws himself forward, eyes widening as his arm pass through the entire body, leaving him stumbling on the other side, blood trickling down his neck and back. The spirit laughs, the sound deep and cruel, kunai held loose in his hand. His body turns opaque and material once more, closer to Konoha.

Kakashi’s eyes narrow.

_Is the spirit targeting the village — not spirits?_

“Are you going to run away from me again?” Kakashi taunts, righting his stance on the slick grass. He ignores the long cut on his back, rolling his shoulder to ensure he still has full movement in his arm. The spirit tenses: Kakashi grins, knowing he’s won his attention.

_I’m sorry Gai,_ but some victories demand sacrifice.

The spirit rushes forward. Kakashi allows the lighting gather in a sharp sword down his arm, the sound of a thousand birds filling the empty road. The spirit throws his arm forward — Kakashi’s eyes widen — _the enemy’s weapon is fire._

Kakashi realizes how badly he’s underestimated his opponent, throwing his gaze to the ground to narrowly avoid the sudden appearance of the spirit’s Sharigan. He hears the spirit pull back to strike again, but instead heavier hands shove Kakashi to the side, taking the worst of the blow meant for Kakashi’s heart. Kakashi’s lightning slams uselessly into the ground, the bone in his arm cracking with the force of impact. He bites back a scream, pushing to his feet and scrambling to face the fight once more.

His savior coughs, thick blood running down Uchiha Fugaku’s chin. He’s smiling, ugly gaze locked on the corrupt spirit.

“You believed that we’d leave Konoha unguarded?” he laughs. “Kushina and Mikoto are more than enough to contain the Nine Tailed Fox, even if it is a legend.”

In the distance, a terrible roar shakes the forest. A hand presses against Kakashi’s shoulder.

“Don’t move,” the newcomer whispers. They’re dressed in the clothing of the Uchiha clan, hand glowing with the soft green light of healers. Kakashi looks back at Fugaku and the enemy: circling them are four more Uchihas, making for a total of seven allies facing off against a single, corrupt spirit.

“You believe this is a surprise?" the enemy taunts. "We knew _exactly_ where the cowards would make their final stand." A smile hardens his voice, but his eye flickers to Fugaku’s dangerous guards.

He may claim to have expected the Uchiha to fight, but likely closer to the village, where the chaos of mortals would give him greater cover. Of course that assumes the spirit is telling the truth, that he's working for others rather than acting alone... Kakashi grimaces, barely able to think past the pain of his half-broken, half healed arm. Who, besides a monster, would ally themselves with a corrupt spirit, beings who only bring about the destruction of their own kind?

Who would want this violence? Who would burn this land? Who would kill Minato? _Minato._ His mentor, his friend...

The enemy smoothly withdraws his fist, pulling it from Fugaku’s body with a faint sucking sound. Without physical support, Fugaku crumples, blood pouring from his wound and onto the dry grass. He shudders once: his body wavers, then disappears, spirit returned to its homeland and the promise of its next elemental cycle.

The corrupt spirit pauses, then steps forward, grinding away what little remains of Fugaku’s spilled guts.

“Peace will come to the Land of Fire,” the enemy promises, single Sharigan burning behind his white mask. His body wavers, then fades, translucent as smoke.

 

Kakashi collapses into his pain.

 

Voices blur in and out at the edge of his consciousness.

_“… should have gone. Itachi’s a shit liar.”_

_“You’re a shit liar. Hey.”_

Small hands dig into his shoulders, shaking him roughly. Even through his brain’s thick haze, Kakashi knows he’s never seen this Uchiha before. Instead of the clan’s usual pure white skin and straight hair, this spirit’s chosen an appearance of tanned limbs and tousled, curly hair.

Yet the Sharigan, shining with two tomoe instead of the fully grown three, are unmistakably Uchiha.

“Hatake?” he asks, shaking Kakashi again. “Who are your friends? Who do you trust the most to watch your back?”

“Gai…”

The Uchiha frowns.

“Lord Chen’s pupil? No, I mean _spirits,_ someone Danzō’s shadows won’t eat alive.”

The lightning spirit clutches his freshly healed arm, struggling to sit upright. 

“Kushina… Where’s Kushina?”

A whistle, hard and sharp, echoes through the clearing. Without warning, the young Uchiha drags Kakashi upright, half propping him against a nearby tree. As soon as the blood clears from Kakashi’s head, he finally notices a second figure: a young girl who has replaced the two women who once guarded Fugaku. Judging by her small stature, she’s still a child, a few centuries old at most.

“Look,” the young man says, drawing Kakashi’s attention back to him. “I’m Shisui, that’s Izumi, you’re Tekka. Don’t activate your Sharigan, don’t question what you see. We’ll keep you safe.”

Two figures burst through the trees: at first all Kakashi sees are the masks. He tenses, certain it’s more enemies from the border — but then he sees the cruel shapes the masks take: strange, grotesque renderings of animals.

“Uchiha,” states the taller one. His mask is of a wide-snouted rat, with matching rodent ears peaking above spiky black hair. “You should be helping with the search and rescue efforts.”

Shisui nods to Kakashi.

“My clansman damaged his arm while rescuing young Izumi. We’re just making our way to safety now.”

The Rat’s eyes narrow behind his mask. A step behind, the shorter spirit is just as attentive as their partner, their wide eyes a light shade of brown behind a more colorful cat mask.

_Has Kakashi ever seen spirits like this before?_ Guardians often wear animal masks in their work, but these masks are different. _Disturbing._ Cruel parodies of nature instead of thoughtful reproductions.

His head pounds with pain and exhaustion. He looks down, trying to focus, but what he sees nearly sends him tumbling to the ground. His hand — that isn’t his hand. Or his clothes — _is this a glamour? Shisui’s?_

“Lord Danzō has ordered all suspicious spirits in the west be detained.”

Shisui laughs.

“Do we look suspicious to you?”

The broken seal and the corrupt spirit, entering through Uchiha land… it makes sense that the old spirits would want any conspirators quickly contained, though why Danzō would be in charge… Danzō is a powerful spirit and Lord Hiruzen’s right-hand man, but he lost most of his power years ago, when Hiruzen conceded the Guardians to Minato…

But now Minato is dead.

“Mikoto… Lady Mikoto,” Kakashi says quickly, looking up at Danzō’s men and poorly playing the part of a proud Uchiha clansman. “We heard that she went to help Lady Uzumaki.”

The Rat shifts his stance. It is his partner who answers Kakashi.

“They successfully contain the Nine Tailed Fox,” the Cat relays, their gaze solemn and unwavering, without fear of Kakashi — or rather, the spirit who appears as Uchiha Tekka — and his Sharigan. “Lady Mikoto has been detained for questioning.”

“Danzō has _no_ right!” Izumi shouts, surprisingly fierce for a spirit so small and young. The Cat shrugs, so slight, it’s almost as if the action is unconscious.

“She brought the news of Minato’s death and was closest to Lady Kushina when she died. You have to admit: this series of events are worth questioning.”

Blood roars through Kakashi's head, blinding his ears and eyes. He’s heard wrong. He _has to have heard wrong._ Kushina can’t, she couldn’t, she wasn’t…

“Died…” Kakashi repeats. 

He does not hear the whispered _Tekka,_ nor does he feel the hand digging into his shoulder in quiet warning, nor does he see the quiet, sharp gaze of the Cat.

All Kakashi sees is Kushina: his first, most brilliant friend, her red hair, her fox tail, her grand smile… _She couldn’t be…_

“Come, cousin,” Shisui whispers, tugging him down the road, beyond the watchful eyes of Danzō’s shadows. “It’s been a long night. We need to find you a safe place to rest.”

 

Gai answers the door half undressed. He sees Kakashi and cries out, throwing his thick arms around the smaller spirit, pulling him tight against his chest and burying his face in Kakashi’s silver hair. Kakashi chokes, unable to draw a full breath, clutching Gai close and allowing himself to see nothing else.

For a moment they stand swaying in the hallway, and then Gai pulls back, tugging them gently inside the bedroom and shutting the door. His hands run across Kakashi’s face, his arms, his legs, smearing the old blood and ash with his calloused fingertips.

“Gai,” Kakashi says, voice breaking. Lightly, he draws his hand around the monk’s waist, trailing down to where a long bandage wraps from the bottom of his ribs to just above his pelvis. Gai shivers at his touch.

“Kakashi.” Gai hesitates, and then gently brushes his lips across Kakashi’s ear. Kakashi closes his eyes, leaning his head against Gai’s collarbone. He’s thick and solid, every part of him real. Kakashi had passed by so many limp, covered bodies in the streets of Konoha… villagers killed by thick smoke or the brutal heat of the fire, a fire he knew Gai would be at the forefront of fighting.

“Will you allow me stay?” Kakashi whispers.

“I wouldn’t allow you to go.”

The monk draws him deeper into the room. It’s small, plain but lovely, dark wood paneling and a simple futon rolled out just beneath narrow windows. The half-moon casts a brilliant light indoors: it shines like pearls against Gai’s dark skin.

Kakashi swears he’s never seen anything more beautiful.

“You can’t carry this blood with you,” Gai insists, gently pushing him to sit on a short bench and turning to fill his small sink with water. Kakashi strips his outer shirt, and after a moment, his undershirt and mask too.

There’s short intake of breath. Kakashi looks up, afraid Gai will make a big deal of it, but Gai seems to swallow back whatever words he has to say. Eyes shining, he gently caresses Kakashi’s jaw.

“I never doubted you, rival,” Gai says, voice warmer than Kakashi has any right to.

Kakashi leans into the touch. After a long minute, Gai pulls away to draw the sponge against Kakashi’s skin. The cool water runs down his neck and shoulders, gently washing away the weight of ash and death. Gai’s thick eyebrows are furrowed as he works, applying the same intensity to this task that he gives to every moment in his life.

For a moment, Kakashi is breathless with it: the intensity of Gai’s devotion.

The monk stands and wrings out the sponge, cleaning his own face and brushing his teeth before draining the sink of water. Kakashi strips down to nothing, slipping under the futon blankets. Gai does the same, and the lightning spirit wraps his arms around his rival’s neck, feeling Gai’s pulse beneath his palms. Kakashi runs his hands down his shoulders, across his flattened chest, down his curved waist and back up to his neck again.

Gai is shyer, lightly tracing the line from Kakashi’s jaw to his collarbone, cupping his small breasts, stretching his fingertips across the smooth expanse of his pale stomach. Gently, he leans in close, twice kissing the side of Kakashi’s head. His body smells of the forest, of oak and fire and sweat, of the soft, clean scent that in every life time is his and his alone.

Kakashi is attuned to the tension in Gai’s limbs, the heaviness behind his soft motions.

“I know,” he whispers. “It’s okay. You’re not alone.”

Gai shakes, pressing both hands wide against Kakashi’s waist. Tears begin to run thickly down his face, and as Kakashi looks at him, as he thinks of all they’ve lost and could have lost still, the lightning spirit begins to cry, too.

In the predawn light, held safely in their rival’s arms, Kakashi and Gai finally allow themselves to grieve.


	4. View and Wonder

##### PART SIX: VIEW

 

Lord Hiruzen is a short man, old enough to look old, even by the standards of immortal spirits. His eyes are tired but warm. Kakashi can remember how inspiring he found his gaze, before the Great War, when Kakashi saw and lost too much to find even kind warlords comforting.

“I mourn for Minato, too,” Lord Hiruzen answers, and for a moment, he allows his steady voice to break. “I mourn for everyone we lost to the Nine Tails’ attack, Kakashi. But still, I cannot allow you to cross the Land of Fire’s borders.”

“You’re the Chief Guardian,” Kakashi argues. “You can allow anything.”

Lord Hiruzen smiles.

“You know that’s not true,” he answers. “Minato argued frequently against the Fire Council and their secondary seals, which prevent any spirit not of the fire from entering, or exiting, our land. I suspect you know this, because I suspect he argued so often out of devotion for you.”

Kakashi’s hands curl into small fists, resting in his lap. His mouth and limbs are sharp, like well cared for blades. He breathes in deep, and then bows slightly before rising to his feet.

“I understand. Thank you for your time.”

“It was my pleasure, young Hatake,” Lord Hiruzen answers. “Please, do not hesitate to visit me more often. I know you’re lonely, and… for Minato’s sake. I would like to look after you.”

Kakashi nods, looking away.

“I’ll try my best, sir.”

Kakashi exits the round office, walking past the two Guardians standing guard outside. There Kakashi pauses, breathing in deep, before moving on.

He is the student of Namikaze Minato. He will not be stopped by any spirit — even his teacher's mentor.

 

“My apologies, I didn’t expect you to have company.”

Kakashi shifts his body, positioning himself between Gai and the visitor. His mind flashes to a memory, centuries earlier, when he warned his mortal friend of forest spirits far more dangerous than Kakashi.

Perhaps there is no one more dangerous than this: Danzō Shimura, resting his hands on a short staff, mouth curved into a cold smile.

“It’s polite to welcome guests inside.”

“It’s polite for guests to be invited.”

Danzō’s smile hardens. His visible eye scouts the small room that serves as Kakashi’s home, made with a careless spell in the center of a maple tree. There are few decorations, save for the piles of books and scrolls, but Kakashi still feels his skin crawling, as if Danzō has stripped him naked and observed him raw.

The ancient fire spirit’s gaze flickers to Gai, and then rests again on Kakashi.

“Are you happy to be serving under Hiruzen again?”

“Kakashi is no Guardian!”

Age and death have only made Gai bolder, as unlikely to respect Kakashi’s warnings to danger as he was years ago, when they first knew each other as children. Yet unlike before, there’s true strength to Gai’s limbs: he would fight anyone for Kakashi — and he might just be determined enough to win.

Kakashi inclines his head in agreement with the fiery monk.

“I served as a Guardian during the Great War. I protected our land then. Now I simply have my books… and my friends.”

“Not many,” Danzō answers dryly. “The Uchihas look down on you for stealing Obito’s eye. Other fire spirits distrust you for your affinity with lightning. Your friendship with Namikaze may have protected you, for all these years, but now… Hiruzen is our leader once again.”

Kakashi tilts his head.

“Is that a threat?” he asks.

“Not at all,” the surprise sounds genuine, which only serves to harden Kakashi's nerves. Danzō leans forward, his single, visible eye gleaming bright. “Young Hatake, can’t you see? I'm offering to be your friend.”

Kakashi tenses.

“For a price.”

Danzō smiles: full and awful and cruel.

“A price you'll be more than willing to pay.”

 

Kakashi hesitates on the forest path. He can’t remember the last time he left the Land of Fire.

Well — that’s only partially true. The last time Kakashi left the Land of Fire, he was a solider.

They were at war.

In this new century of peace, he barely recognizes the Land of Rivers. The trees, the water, the earth… it is all the nearly same as the nearby Land of Fire. Eventually, he knows, the trees will grow thinner, the air more humid and hot… but beyond that, he can’t imagine what the villages will look like. How the spirits will act and talk without the fear of blood between them. Kakashi closes his eyes, struggling to convince himself, once again, that this is the right choice. 

_It's the only choice,_ he promises himself.

“Rival!”

 _“Gai,”_ Kakashi growls, turning to glare at the tall monk, who races along the forest path with a huge pack bouncing against his back. Despite Kakashi’s harsh tone, Gai is beaming.

“I’m coming with you!” he declares, as if his intention isn’t already obvious. “I’ve been born in nearly every great nation and I've always found my way back to you! I’ll make an _incredible_ guide for your journey!”

Kakashi rubs at his eyes, then swiftly, turns his back on the monk, stomping through the undergrowth.

“Gai! I…” the words trail off, cut off by choked huff of air. No wonder Gai had barely argued about Danzō’s offer! During all these weeks of preparation, he was preparing himself too! “Minato… wouldn’t want his reincarnation found by Danzō. I have no intention of betraying him and bringing him back to the Land of Fire.”

Gai catches up to Kakashi, jogging to keep pace at his side.

“I know.”

“You…” Kakashi frowns. Gai had been a frequent guest to Kakashi's frustrations about needing permission to leave the Land of Fire, permission that had been denied by the Uchihas and then Hiruzen himself, but Gai had never asked why Kakashi was so eager to leave, past babbling about the splendor of the world. His friend only glances once at Kakashi, otherwise keeping his gaze focused on the path ahead.

“Your true quest is quite obvious,” Gai insists. “As is mine. I won’t you let you throw your life away, rival.”

Kakashi’s mouth goes dry. The lightning spirit is forced to take in a long, shuttering breath before he can walk forward again.

When he does so, he says nothing, unable to turn away his only friend and rival.

 

Gai rolls out his green sleeping bag with a flourish, settling it close to the fire. He then frowns at Kakashi and his meager belongings.

“Where are you sleeping?” Gai demands.

Kakashi shrugs.

“Well… you’ve startled me from enough trees to know that I don’t need blankets to be comfortable.”

Gai scoffs, rapidly patting the sliver of room beside him. Kakashi hesitates, feeling a knot tension in his chest he’s loath to give name to. After a long moment, mostly fighting himself, Kakashi sighs and moves to Gai.

Kakashi makes a small pillow out of his outer shirt, then tucks himself against his friend’s side, sighing softly as he does so. Gai is as warm and strong as he remembers, tightly wrapping his arms around Kakashi’s slim form until they’re both comfortable.

Kakashi is almost asleep when Gai whispers, softly:

“Will you really kill him, rival?”

Kakashi keeps his eyes closed, his face tucked against his rival’s chest. In that moment, he does not remember Minato or Fugaku’s murders as he witnessed them: Instead, it is Gai who crumples under the enemy spirit’s hands, Gai who turns to ash and wind as the cruel spirit gloats behind his white mask, red eye ablaze with hatred.

“Yes,” he answers, voice steady with his conviction. Gai deserves to know the truth, if he decides to stay. “Some evil… deserves to be destroyed.”

 

True to his word, Gai is a _marvelous_ guide.

No matter where they travel, Gai seems to make friends. He recognizes people by their surnames, talking gallantly of their families, their histories and their land. Even in villages he’s never been to in past lives, people warm quickly to him, impressed by his fierce energy and tireless helping hand.

They begin in the Land of Rivers, where the ruins of a burned valley lead them north: it appears the Land of Fire is not the first place the corrupt spirit has visited in an attempt to raze the land of life and magic. Kakashi doesn’t understand what drives such destructive work, but he learns to grow familiar with signs of his enemy’s battles: there is a cruel order to corrupt spirit’s fires, carefully sticking to the borderlands rather than straying into more well-protected countries.

It points to a powerful spirit, but a singular spirit, working alone.

“His allies must still be in the Land of Fire,” Gai points out. Kakashi shrugs.

“His allies aren’t our concern.”

In their remote travels, they meet few spirits but many humans along rocky trails. Gai’s booming personality means few look twice at Kakashi’s guise, passing for a slim human with gray hair and dark eyes. It’s only the monks who inspect him closer: dressed in robes from all five nations, happily mixing with the diverse population of the borderlands, the monks’ profession has them long accustomed to the signs of wild and elemental spirits.

A year into their search, Gai insists on eating with a pair of monks trained at Mizu Temple. Their blue robes are faded with months of hard travel that’s taken them far from the holy grounds in the Land of Water.

“A spirit with red eyes?” Heki repeats, chopsticks suspended over his plain plate of rice and fish. Waterfall Village is a small but bustling town, and at this late hour, the restaurant is filled with strong conversation. “Those belong to a heavenly clan, correct? Spirits born with specific markings and power.”

Kakashi nods.

“The red eyes become Sharigans, a sight magic, for any Uchiha in the cycle of fire.”

Heki whistles low.

“Is that so?”

Heki’s partner, Ao, downs his cup of tea as if it was hard alcohol. One of his eyes lists to the side, glassy and blind.

“No Uchiha has been seen outside the Land of Fire in several centuries. It’s assumed they’ve found a way to end their cycles quickly, so they can again obtain the Sharigan.”

“That’s… interesting,” Kakashi frowns. It doesn’t match what he knows of the prideful Uchiha, who never do anything the easy way. Ao shrugs.

“There’s a long history of humans and spirits experimenting with the natural order of things. Is it really so surprising?”

Kakashi hums.

“Well, is any of that history recent?”

Heki considers the question for a long moment, and then nods, solid and firm.

“The Land of Hot Water. We’ve heard strange rumors from fleeing spirits, of storms with red lightning and beasts without compassion, ready to consume anything peaceful and good.”

Kakashi tenses, even as Gai nods enthusiastically.

“That’s brilliant advice, thank you!” he answers, because he doesn’t know.

He can’t know.

The Land of Hot Water is where Kakashi lost Obito.

 

Gai grows quieter and quieter as they travel east. One day, wrapped in blankets to protect from the cold winter, he points to the road south.

“In my second life… I helped many brave refugees flee the war between the Land of Earth and Fire. We would go along that road, seeking shelter in the woods and sympathetic homes.”

Kakashi smiles.

“You’ve always been brave.”

Gai shrugs.

“It’s only natural! I’ve taken an oath to protect all people!”

A few months into their journey, Gai had begun to let his hair grow long. For the first time, Kakashi sees it is a silky black color, curving easily around the monk’s head. Each Sunday, Gai will cut his bangs straight in an unflattering bowl cut, but he otherwise takes good care of it.

Kakashi never asks why Gai no longer shaves his head: if it means something, about his connection to the Temple and its strict vows.

“Is the Daimyō’s family still in power?”

Gai adjusts his pack, and Kakashi’s, which he's insisted on carrying for the week as a test of his endurance.

“Yes, but—” he trails off. “There was a great evil… and his sons were forced to change their ways in order to keep their power.”

“This evil… did it have anything do with one of your deaths?”

Gai dies young. He always dies young: as if his body refuses to live past thirty-one, the age he reached in his very first lifetime.

It’s never struck Kakashi as fair. Thirty years alive, and then at least fifty dead before being wrenched again into the world of the living, beginning the cycle all over again.

Gai laughs, shaking his head.

“Let’s not spoil this gorgeous day with talk of death!” he insists.

But for the rest of the day, Kakashi catches Gai, from time to time, looking towards the south, down the road that leads back to the Land of Fire.

 

Kakashi had hoped the rumors in the Land of Hot Water would turn out to be baseless, so that they could double back to countries that carry less painful memories. 

Instead, the pair arrives to find something much worse.

The old fisherman points his crooked finger across the ocean, toward the distant speck of land just visible on the horizon.

“The spirits fled as soon as the red storms began,” he explains. “Stick around long enough — just a few days — and you’ll see them, too.”

“Kakashi,” Gai starts, eyes dark as he lays his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Kakashi’s memories crack through his bones, threatening to break skin.

“Why?” he whispers.

Why are they being led to the Island of Whirlpools?

 

“We don’t have to go.”

Kakashi doesn’t hear him. Everything that seemed so simple these past two years suddenly crystalizes with painful clarity: Danzō’s strange request, the ruins in the Land of Rivers, the violent rumors bringing them far east.

“I’m missing something,” he insists.

What does Danzō want with Minato’s heir — _if_ he wants Minato’s heir? Who cares enough about Kakashi — a recluse and a lightning spirit — to lead him away from the Land of Fire, chasing ghosts?

“You’re a genius,” Gai answers warmly. “You’ll figure it out.”

Kakashi turns to pace the room’s width again but is interpreted by Gai, who swiftly pulls Kakashi down to sit upon the nearest bed. The mattress is firmer than Kakashi expected — and this small connection to reality is enough to draw him back into the present.

He sighs deeply, rubbing at Obito’s eye.

“All of my past lives… they were born on the Island of Whirlpools,” Kakashi explains. The Island’s connection to the elements were at once weaker but more diverse than any of the five great nations, which protect the heart of singular elements like fire. “I was born in the Island’s ruins… when a group of corrupt water spirits were at the height of their bloodlust. I was born as they destroyed… everything.”

The attacking spirits transformed the Island of Whirlpools into a Missing Land: a land without life or magic. Spirits draw their power from their home: when the land is harmed, so too are the spirits who live there.

In some ways, Kakashi’s mother was lucky. Part of the Island’s first line of defense, she died early enough to be reborn in her next elemental cycle, likely just hours before the magic of the Island faded completely.

Kakashi, Kushina, Rin… they had all lived in the Land of Fire because they had no other home to return to.

“Rin… she tried to go back but she said… there was something terrible there.” Kakashi remembers the way her eyes glowed red, like an Uchiha’s but brighter, and how the young water spirit screamed raw until she threw her body against Kakashi’s lightning.

“I didn’t believe her,” he says, bitter. “So she killed herself.”

Gai shakes his head, pressing his hand against Kakashi’s arm. It’s the same arm that drove its way into Rin’s chest, coated with her slick blood.

Some days, it feels as if it’ll never be clean.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was her choice to make.”

Kakashi bows his head.

“I… still need to make it up to her. If it’s not already too late.”

Gai doesn’t warn him it’ll be dangerous. Instead, he draws them both down so that they’re laying side by side, resting above the cheap inn covers. It’s a plea to rest: a promise to follow.

Kakashi pushes close, burying his face against Gai’s neck. Gai’s lips press lightly to his pale jaw; Kakashi sighs in answer.

It’s not the first time Gai has kissed him, but it feels different with black hair tickling his skin, with sun-tinted arms encircling his own in the quiet privacy of an inn room. Kakashi drags himself forward, bracing his body above his friend’s. Through the cloth of his mask, he returns the kiss for the first time: a soft peck on the jaw, the nose, the left and right eyelid. Here he lingers close, inhaling the soft, sweaty scent Gai always carries with him, before drawing back to look his fill.

Gai’s eyes open, gazing back, so intensely dark and wanting that Kakashi feels light, his body boneless. His gray eye flickers to Gai’s round mouth: he knows spirits and humans who _hunger_ with an instinct that has never consumed Kakashi. Even now, he doesn’t know if the desire curling amongst his bones is his own, or simply an answer to the closeness of Gai’s body.

Kakashi doesn’t know if he cares.

His desire may not be hunger but it is _want_ , permission to allow those hands and eyes to wander, to explore Kakashi and his flesh as intimately as they both desire.

“In this and every lifetime,” Gai confides, his voice rough and low, “I’ve wanted you.”

His calloused hand traces the lines of Kakashi’s body, hand coming to rest against Kakashi’s cheek, fingertips just reaching the edge of his cloth mask.

“Gai,” Kakashi answers, permission and confession both. Gai drags the mask away and their lips meet halfway in a deep, consuming kiss, each drawing other the other closer for a night of slow pleasure and softly swallowed desire. 

 

The morning sea smells sour, carrying undercurrents of rot and decay. Gai and Kakashi's hands occasionally brush together as they walk, side by side across the rubble, but they keep their gazes fixed on the gray ruins of the island, certain they’re not alone.

Faint memories tug at the back of Kakashi’s mind, distant, like a well-worn story that’s become a part of him from the outside-in. He remembers the most important parts of his past lives: the friendship with Kushina, Sakumo's favorite swimming coves, the taste of stolen fruit when it’s bitter and just-ripe.

It’s nothing like the landscape before them: colorless ruins sunk into a rocky expanse, stretching from one somber end of the island to the other. Hundreds of spirits once lived here but now the strongest relics of their lives are scraps of bright fabric.

Gai presses his hand against Kakashi’s shoulder, pointing silently to a charred pit. Kakashi nods and Gai draws his hand away, body tense as he scouts the surrounding rocks.

Knowing Gai is guarding him, Kakashi gives his full attention to the remains of the fire. Uncovering Obito’s eye, the Sharigan brings into view charred sticks and fish guts, alongside discarded leaves, washed up from distant shores and dragged to the island’s center. Excrement and piss pool nearby, buzzing with fat flies. Kakashi pinches his nose, trying to minimize the stench.

It’s as if the spirit living here is drawing on half human, half animal memory. If the enemy spirit is an Uchiha, from a clan that can sometimes take the form of a cat, then the fish and fire make sense — though it’s far cry from the organized violence they found to the west. Kakashi crouches, trying to make out the age of the charred dinner.

Gai screams: Kakashi turns, catching sight of a pale blur as latches itself upon the monk’s chest, its savage cry mingling with Gai’s booming voice.

The figure is small and bright, barely taller than Kakashi’s knees yet quick enough to draw blood against Gai’s face and neck. Lightning crackles at the end of Kakashi’s palms but Gai shouts over the creature, wrenching it away from his chest and holding it at arm’s length:

Only then does Kakashi see the yellow hair, the sunburnt skin and brilliant blue eyes.

“Let go of me, you bastard!” screams the reincarnation of Namikaze Minato.

 

Kakashi is sitting on a rock, staring without seeing.

“You’ve been here… the whole time?”

The little boy squints up at him, clearly unimpressed. Kakashi isn’t sure that’s fair: of the two of them, Kakashi is the only one wearing clothes.

“Yeah, what’s it to you, old man?!”

"Then, are you Kushina’s next cycle?”

_“Who?”_

Kakashi struggles to his feet, as if this will help him find some semblance of balance. It’s not _unheard of_ to completely forget your previous lifetime. At least, Kakashi is almost certain it’s not unheard of…

What he can’t account for is the boy turning up _here_. Spirits tied to the five great nations cycle through homelands as they cycle through elements: Minato should have been reborn in the Land of Wind, and Kushina… she was a wind spirit, but she adopted the Land of Fire as home. She should have been reborn in the Land of Lightning, not a Missing Land, which _by definition_ , is impossible for spirits to draw life from.

Naruto seems unaware of his impossibility, instead delighting in the discovery of a particularly large puddle.

“How about this! What’s your clan name, Young Naruto?” Gai inquires, using the name the boy chose himself seemingly only minutes earlier. The monk won Naruto’s instant affection after besting him in mortal combat, which to Kakashi, mostly looked like Gai holding onto Naruto long enough for the boy to tire himself out.

“It’s Naruto!” Naruto exclaims. 

“Not Namikaze? Or Uzumaki?”

Naruto thinks for a long moment, and then declares:

“Uzumaki!”

Kakashi’s head pounds. Uzumaki Naruto is practically _Whirlpool Whirlpool._

“You have to be a Namikaze.”

“Why?!”

Kakashi isn’t about to admit Minato’s clan name would make it easier for Kakashi to return Naruto to the Land of Fire, suspecting it would only endear Naruto further to making Kakashi’s life harder.

“Because the sage toads are more powerful than the red foxes.”

Naruto makes a face.

“Do _you_ like toads?”

Kakashi blinks. Gai roars with laughter, clutching his belly as tears overflow freely from his crinkled eyes.

“Well… it’s not really about what I like.”

It’s not as if they’re picking out favorite animals. Sacred clan summons are, well, _sacred._

Naruto stomps around in a new puddle, throwing up water and mud. Kakashi rubs his covered eye, suddenly exhausted. It’s as if the boy is both Minato and Kushina, not simply one or the other’s reincarnation.

“Maybe he likes dogs, _wild_ dogs,” Gai stage whispers. Kakashi glares at his rival. He is _not_ about to adopt a yellow-haired terror into his clan of one.

“What animal do you have a pact with?” Naruto demands, pausing to tug on Gai’s green robes. Gai grins, crouching to meet Naruto’s wide blue eyes.

“Hmm…! A most astute question, bright pupil! It’s… the youthful tortoise!”

Kakashi _chokes_.

“TORTOISES!” Naruto shouts, throwing up a fistful of loose dirt and debris.

“You know… lying about a clan pact is considered blasphemous,” Kakashi warns. Gai stands and touches his hand to the gentle arch of Kakashi’s low back, chuckling as they watch Naruto dance back and forth, shouting _tortoises, tortoises, tortoises!_

“He’s a remarkable young spirit.”

“Mmm…” Kakashi answers, as quick as ever to voice his feelings. “Well, he'll certainly need a better place to grow.”

 

Kakashi whistles hard and sharp in imitation of a warning call from years ago. From the other side of the border a young fire spirit tenses, and then reappears at the seals’ edge, too quick for even Kakashi’s Sharigan to follow.

“Impressive,” he says, stepping out of the shadows. Shisui’s surprise doesn’t reach his face but is woven into the wonder of his voice.

“Hatake?” he asks, and then his Sharigan goes to Gai, who follows Kakashi with his arms full of a squirming young spirit. 

“The Land of Fire!” Gai declares, tears merrily rolling down his face. “How magnificent to return to the verdant green of home, and in the height of Spring! Lord Chen will be overcome when he clasps eyes on you in this light, young Naruto!”

“Maito…? _Namikaze?_ ”

“Naruto!” Naruto corrects impatiently.

Shisui blinks, then digs his hand into his forearm, as if trying to clear his head of a glamour.

“Hatake… We heard you’re Danzō’s dog now,” Shisui shares. “Though Lady Mikoto is convinced he killed you and finally took an Uchiha eye as his own.”

Kakashi laughs.

“Oh no,” he answers, red and gray eye sparkling with mirth. The lightning spirit hasn’t noticed yet, but he’s grown softer, as most would after traveling with the lively young _Whirlpool Whirlpool_. “I just got a little lost on the path of life, is all.”

 

##### PART SEVEN: WONDER

 

You again?

Well, catch your breath.

After all of this, we’ve come back to the beginning. You already know how this life will end.

Yet I guess… Some stories have to be told, no matter how little we can expect a happy ending.

 

For a moment, Kakashi doesn’t recognize Gai’s voice: the monk is fifteen again, and the high pitch doesn’t always match Kakashi’s memories.

“Kakashi!” Gai shouts. “It’s Naruto!”

Naruto’s name is enough to startle Kakashi from his rest. He drops from the maple tree, Sharigan spinning beneath its cloth cover, limbs tensed for battle.

“What’s happened?” he demands, a thousand fears running through his mind: Did Naruto run away? Did Mikoto give them up? Has Hiruzen found him at the Temple? Does Danzō know Kakashi lied? Kakashi isn’t used to depending upon so many people — he doesn’t like the feeling of having to rely on more than himself.

“Iruka died,” Gai answers, voice cracking. “Naruto… he…. he doesn’t understand…”

Kakashi finds his breath again.

“Of course,” he answers. Iruka had become one of Naruto’s first, true friends: they met when Iruka was an initiate, but even as the monk aged their bond only grew closer. Iruka often referred to Naruto as a brother — and Kakashi knew from experience how painful the loss of found family could be.

Naruto has never had to face this before: the grief of losing someone beautifully, painfully mortal. 

Kakashi’s calm slips away the moment he looks back to Gai. The monk does not look settled, his limbs tense, dark eyes flickering back to the horizon. Kakashi follows his gaze: there, violent and bulbous, are hideous storm clouds, growing fatter and crackling with strange, red lightning.

“Naruto,” Kakashi whispers.

 

Kakashi pushes through the thick crowd of Kasai monks and Konoha villagers. An older monk — one Kakashi’s only seen from a distance — calls out to Gai, but his friend ignores him, following close behind Kakashi as he pushes past the worried mortals and onto the cleared Temple grounds.

The brutal storm rages: once peaceful gardens reduced to violent ruins, entire trees uprooted, trunks and rocks smashed against the sides of ancient temple walls. Parts of the earth are singed, small fires smoldering where lightning has kindled dry wood. Kakashi barely has the strength to move against the powerful gales, which whip his clothes and hair against his body.

Kakashi’s never seen magic like this: a violent combination of both wind and lightning. 

They turn a corner: Kakashi sees the shape of Naruto dimly, surrounded by whirling debris, his small form clutching an old, still body. With his Sharigan uncovered, Kakashi can make out the outline of a deep, red energy: a terrible evil, morphing around the young spirit’s skin in the shape of an agile beast.

Kakashi’s breath goes cold. He’s certain: it’s the same evil energy emitted by the wild spirit on the beach, all those decades ago.

Back then, it had been powerful enough to push against Kushina’s seals.

Back then, it had grown powerful enough to kill her.

“Kakashi!” Gai shouts, shoving at his back. Kakashi shakes, startled from his own fear. This isn’t — it _doesn’t matter_ what this is or isn’t. That’s Naruto, the reincarnation of one or perhaps of both of his closest friends.

Kakashi has to help him.

The lightning spirit moves forward. He feels the pressure in the air build and in answer, allows blue lightning to grow in his palm, gripping his wrist for support. As Kakashi reaches Naruto so does the red lightning: arching from the sky to the ground. Kakashi leaps forward, slicing it away from the young spirit and his mortal friend — the world burns white, Kakashi’s entire body roars with pain. He collapses onto the ground, still, barely hearing the wind quiet, ignorant to the cold ground and the first warm breath of sunlight.

“Kakashi? Kakashi?” a small voice sobs.

He can barely open his eyes, but just as he fought the storm, he fights the darkness threatening to overcome his senses. Naruto is peering at him with a tear-stained face, body held protectively in Gai’s arms. The lighting spirit smiles weakly, reaching out with shaking arms to gently hug spirit and monk.

“Yo,” Kakashi answers, voice croaking. 

Naruto sobs, clinging to his shirt, tight enough to grab a small fistful of Kakashi’s binder. Gai presses his face against Kakashi’s hair, crying just as hard as the young spirit.

“I thought you died,” he sobs. “I thought we’d lost you!”

 

They eventually calm enough to pull away. Kakashi assures them both that he’ll be alright on his own, at least for a few minutes. Gai levels him with a single, disbelieving glare, but doesn’t protest as he gathers Naruto in his arms. Kakashi watches the young monk carry the young spirit away from Iruka’s body, cradled close with the promise of bed and a long, heroic story.

The moment they’re out of sight, Kakashi sighs, resting his head against his knees. Despite the early hour of day, he already feels ready to pass out again. The cloth that usually covers his Sharigan has disappeared, and he can feel a long tear in the side of his cloth mask. The exposed skin feels strange and uncomfortable, but he can’t deal with himself yet.

Not until Naruto is safe.

Kakashi focuses on his hand, willing a small, crackling ball of energy into existence: it’s a faint blue, pale and pulsing with the code he and Mikoto agreed on long ago. At the time, he promised himself he wouldn’t trust the Uchihas past smuggling himself and Naruto inside the Land of Fire’s borders. _Well, that had been a hopeful and foolish thought._ Naruto is more rambunctious than Kakashi ever was a child: he needs an entire clan of allies to keep him safely hidden in Kasai Temple, tucked away from the Land of Fire’s most powerful spirits.

Kakashi still isn’t sure the Uchihas like him, but he can no longer deny that Mikoto and her clansmen have put their lives on the line for Naruto, protecting Minato’s heir from both Danzō and Hiruzen’s searches.

Kakashi lets his spell go, watching it disappear beyond the Temple walls. 

He knows: no ally can protect them from the attention Naruto’s storm will bring.

 

Naruto is looking more than half-way to sleep, but his eyes fly open as soon as he notices Kakashi trying to gingerly sneak into his room.

“Kakashi!”

Gai follows Naruto’s gaze, catching Kakashi with one of his dazzling smiles.

“Rival! Sit, sit!” he insists, leaping to his feet and mostly pushing Kakashi the remaining few feet, dumping him in the vacated chair at Naruto’s bedside. “How tough and cool of you, to make it all this way alone! Why don’t you finish the grand story of our beautiful rival-ship, and I’ll go alert Lord Chen that the grounds are safe once more.”

“Well… alright,” Kakashi answers, even accepting a small turtle-print blanket, tucked carefully around his shoulders by the monk. He lets his gray eye drift-half closed but keeps his eye on Gai as he not-so-gently tip-toes out of the room, closing the temple door behind him.

He tells himself that even Danzō wouldn’t be ready to invade the Temple before nightfall, but logic has no hold over his fear: he’s lost in his own worry until a small hand tentatively wraps around his forearm.

“Kakashi… will Iruka come back, like Bushy-Brows Sensei?”

Kakashi hesitates, looking down at his small, bright-eyed charge. When he and Gai first found Naruto, dirty and abandoned in the Island of Whirlpools, Kakashi imagined he could be to Naruto what Sakumo had been to him, but…

Kakashi’s world may not be gray anymore, but neither is it full of the same color he sees reflected in Naruto — and Gai’s — eyes. Happiness doesn’t come easy to Kakashi. Neither does peace, or stability. There are too many parts of him that are hurting... that are afraid to hurt more.

“No,” he answers. “Not like Gai.”

Naruto’s eyes glisten. He pulls away, flopping over so that he’s staring at the ceiling.

“Bushy-Brows says everyone is reincarnated, even humans! So Iruka may not come back as a monk, but maybe he’ll be a tree, or a dolphin, or a spirit like me! Then we could live together forever, and do cool tricks and eat ramen and prank all the stuffy old-timers!”

Kakashi smiles.

“Yeah… that’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

If no one died.

If everyone we loved could returned to us somehow. 

 

That night, Kakashi dreams of stones.

Above him the sky is so bright it’s blinding, making it impossible to see where the stones come from, crushing his feet and legs and groin. Strong arms grip him just beneath his armpits, dragging him stained and bloody from the rubble and into the safety of cool, dark shadows. Kakashi can’t see his face but he can feel calloused palms pressing against his jaw his neck his belly, his abs, thighs, toes.

 _Kakashi,_ the mortal man whispers, over and over again. Something warm flutters against his skin, soft as a kiss. _My Kakashi._

_My rival._

Kakashi wakes breathless and aching, pressing a hand against his stolen eye until his heart smooths into a recognizable rhythm. 

 

Even when his breath is under control, Kakashi can’t fall asleep again. He stretches his back against the uncomfortable wooden chair, hugging his blanket tighter and watching Naruto snore in the early evening light… but after a few minutes of watching a sleeping kid, it feels a little creepy, not to mention incredibly dull.

He frowns. It’s late, but where’s Gai? Snoring in his own room? Surely he would have spoken to Kakashi after checking in with the rest of the monks — it’s not like him to be respectful _and_ quiet.

Kakashi pushes to his feet, ignoring the fresh wave of exhaustion that pours through his body. He only hesitates when he looks down at Naruto — for the boy is a wonder, isn’t he?

While most people lazily excuse the world as cruel, Naruto… he remains kind.

He remains hopeful.

Kakashi drapes his turtle-print blanket on top of Naruto, patting down his bright yellow hair before quietly exiting the room.

The Temple hallway is empty and dark. It makes Kakashi feel like a thief — or a ghost — as he makes his way through the hall, past Gai’s empty room and out onto the main path of the Temple grounds.

He hasn’t stayed here after nightfall since the eve of the Nine Tails attack. Already he can see the hours of work the monks have put in into restoring their grounds again, piles of rubble made neat, the broken stone watching over Kakashi’s slow search.

Kakashi follows his nose, a faint scent in the wind: it’s Gai… and someone else. Their scents lead him further and further from the center of the Temple until he’s walking along the path that traces the outer wall, winding towards the small gate that is opposite Konoha and the holy forest.

There he sees Gai’s familiar figure, flanked by three tense shadows. Kakashi forgets his exhaustion, pushing quicker to reach his friend’s side.

The enemy sees him first.

“Hatake,” the center spirit smiles. “You’re late.”

Illuminated by pale moonlight stands Danzō Shimura, in all his awful glory.

“Rival!” Gai warns, holding out a strong arm. “You’re injured! I’m more than enough for these pathetic villains!”

Danzō Shimura is flanked by two spirits dressed in the grotesque masks that mark them as his personal guards. Kakashi recognizes the Cat and Rat as the two spirits who allayed him years ago, just after Fukagu’s death: one has grown taller, but their masks make their identities clear enough.

It feels like an impossible coincidence that these would be the same two spirits to face Kakashi again tonight — if Kakashi was one to believe in coincidence.

“On the night of the Nine Tails attack, you sent your men after me,” Kakashi says. “Why?”

Danzō’s mouth twists into an ugly grin.

“She tried to protect you, didn't she?” he answers. “Delaying with Itachi, pandering with Shisui and Itami… but I know you were with Kazikage. I know you saw him die.”

Kakashi frowns, limbs tense. How could Danzō know about the Uchihas, how could Danzō know about _any_ of that night? Only three people witnessed Minato’s death, and one of them his murderer.

“Well…” Kakashi answers, stalling for time as much as answers. If Mikoto hasn’t answered his message by now, maybe… maybe she’s planning on being here in person. Maybe she’s planning on trusting him tonight, of all nights, instead of harboring old wounds. “Then why ask for the help of a cowardly lightning spirit?”

“You’re no coward, Rival!” Gai shouts. It’s not a helpful interjection, but it still makes Kakashi’s heart soar.

“Even Hiruzen was suspicious of you, a lightning spirit who’s done _nothing_ for the Land of Fire,” Danzō looks past Kakashi, past Gai. “But when he dithered, wanting _peace_ over _action_ , I knew I had to protect my land again. One final plan to purify the country.”

The awful smile returns.

“It was clever of you, making me believe you slunk back a failure, pretending to be my spy while hiding Minato’s heir under my nose. Yet tonight, once again… you’ve proven yourself to be as softhearted as your mentor.”

Danzō motions with his hand, leaning the other on his short staff. The Cat and Rat step forward, moving into starting stances.

“Where is he, Hatake? We both know that Namikaze is the only spirit powerful enough to control wind in a storm as deadly as today’s.”

“Rival, _Kakashi_ , get back!”

Kakashi ignores Gai. Though he can feel the exhaustion weighing down his limbs, the pain pounding against both his gray eye and the Sharigan… he knows that Gai can’t survive this fight alone.

“What do you want with Naruto?” he asks. “When I left, you never expected me to return with Minato’s son.”

“I expected you to die,” Danzō pauses. “Instead, you had help and became quicker than the trap Madara laid out for you.”

Madara? _Uchiha_ Madara?

“That’s impossible,” Kakashi whispers. “He’s not real.”

“No matter,” Danzō answers. “After centuries of waiting he will finally obtain his revenge — and I will finally obtain the Sharigan.”

 

The earth shatters: Gai shoves Kakashi sideways, throwing him to safety. It’s so like the sacrifice of Fugaku that for a moment Kakashi believes he’ll look up and see blood: but Gai is unharmed, spinning in midair to slam his legs against the Rat. The spirit stumbles backwards, raising his arms to attack again, the Cat standing firm just a step behind him.

Kakashi scrambles to his feet, running forward with a speed he’s learned from decades of impossible challenges with Gai; Kakashi uses the speed while shoving his palm forward with the smallest spark of lightning teasing at his fingertips. If they’re to have any chance at winning without dying, he’ll have to reserve as much of his strength as possible.

The Cat makes to dodge but instead takes the hit, turning at the last moment to purposefully have the lightning dissipate against their shoulder instead of their heart. Gai smoothly slips into the fight, moving forward with a flurry of blows too quick for Kakashi to follow.

The lightning spirit opens his second eye, allowing the Sharigan to sharpen the night. The earth surges forward again — but this time he realizes it’s not the earth at all. _It’s roots._ Kakashi dodges the sharpened wood, trying to find a foothold in the shifting ground, full of tangled stems tearing up the rock and dirt. This… this must be the famed power of the ancient spirits, who could create whole forests with the combined elements of water _and_ earth.

_Why is a spirit like this working for Danzō?_

There is no more time for questions. Steel glints at Kakashi’s side: he spins to meet it, gripping the pale hand to force the blade downward, pointing it towards the earth while countering with his free hand — but the blow is caught close to the enemy’s belly. Danzō smiles at him, face hideous and close: one eye glints under moonlight, the other still covered in thick, white bandages. Blood drips through the cloth sling of his damaged arm, but he doesn’t seem to feel it.

“What a pleasure,” the spirit taunts. “To see how eager you are to die.”

Kakashi grimaces, tightening his hand over Danzō’s and the sword hilt, transferring the lightning from one limb to the other. This time Danzō cries out, loosening his hold on his weapon. Kakashi drops, grabbing the blade and rolling backward, leaping to his feet with the tantō held out between them.

“Maybe not as eager as you’d like,” he answers.

Danzō laughs.

“You’re rusty,” he declares.

Kakashi shrugs. Danzō isn’t wrong: it’s been years since Kakashi held a tantō or practiced the intricate fighting style native to spirits in the Land of Fire — but Kakashi hasn’t been idle, in all of those centuries of retirement. Challenging Gai, helping Minato, training Naruto… it’s kept him sharper than Danzō could ever dream.

Kakashi drives the blade straight into the ground, shattering the steal against sharp stone.

Danzō’s lets out a furious cry, hands moving quickly in a seal that only Kakashi’s Sharigan can follow. Kakashi copies it, fire and lightning clashing together in a burst of furious light. Through the steam Kakashi sights Gai battling the Cat, the Rat limp and fallen at the side of their battle.

Kakashi’s eyes are drawn back to Danzō. Danzō lashes out with a line of fire, which Kakashi ducks, running close and kicking out with his feet in an imitation of the Kasai Monks’ quick style. Danzō struggles to match Kakashi’s speed, but his strength is incredible: taking hit after hit before landing his own, a blow powerful enough to send Kakashi stumbling backwards.

His ribs feel bruised and broken. He struggles to breathe, trying to gather lightning in his palms, but the fight with Naruto has exhausted him: he can barely feel the connection to his magic. Danzō’s clothes are torn and bloodied, but his smile is fixed and terrible. A knife, hidden in the folds of his clothing, appears gleaming in his white palm.

“Do you know what makes spirits weak?” Danzō asks, walking forward. “When they look after those who are not their own.”

Danzō holds the knife out, not towards Kakashi, but towards Gai.

The knife flies from Danzō’s hand. Kakashi rushes forward. Gai turns. The blade sinks fully into his chest; Gai stumbles back, weight half-crushing Kakashi. The body, the blood, feel so warm beneath Kakashi’s fingertips.

“Gai!” he cries. Kakashi clutches Gai’s body to him, sinking onto the ground while supporting the entirety of Gai’s weight.

“No,” Kakashi says, pressing his hands deeper against the wound. “No, Gai, _no,”_ he urges and in his eyes he sees Rin, he sees Obito and Minato and Kushina and Sakumo and all the loved ones he was never allowed to save.

“My rival,” Gai whispers, though to call it a whisper is generous: Gai coughs up blood with the endearment, coating his chin with a fresh stain of red. His right hand rises weakly at his side, but Kakashi is cruel, sometimes, and does not take it.

“Gai, stop, _stop,”_ he pleads, pressing his palms against the wound as if he can will it closed with his rage and grief alone.

“My rival,” Gai repeats, eyes shining. “I’m happy. Happy you love so much, despite how long and cruel life has been to you.”

“Gai,” Kakashi whispers, pressing his forehead close, bent over the body that is hardly more than a boy, despite his death, despite his dying.

His sobs are overtaken by a scream.

“No!” a young voice shouts. “Not Bushy-Brows Sensei, not him too!”

 

Wind and lightning crackle around them: Naruto blazes with evil energy, a red that burns brighter than any Sharigan. Naruto drops to all fours, growing more animalistic as he falls: Kakashi can see slit eyes, long fox whiskers and jagged nails growing from the small spirit’s body.

This is nothing like Kushina’s transformations — this is everything like the Nine Tailed Fox.

Danzō faces away from them, entranced by the growing form of a legend.

“It’s true!” The bandages have half-fallen away from his face and blood is still pouring from his right arm — yet still Danzō grins, victorious and horrible. “He is the Nine-Tailed Beast, reborn!”

The Cat, frozen over the crumpled form of their partner, is the first to shake away their awe. They stand, body shaking not with exhaustion but with anger, brightening their wide eyes as they face their master.

“Lord Danzō!” they shout. “The elements of wind and lightning are coming from the boy—”

“I know!” Danzō answers, grin half-mad. “You and Kinoto must capture him alive!”

But the Cat isn’t listening to Danzō. They rip away their grotesque mask, revealing a plain face just as young as Kakashi’s. They grip their Lord’s closest arm, dragging Danzō closer.

“You promised me,” they shout over the growing howl of second storm. “You swore that Lord Orochimaru had died, that his experiments would end!”

“Kinoe, this isn’t his work! I would never—”

Naruto lets out a terrible roar, larger than his own body. Wind and red lightning crackle around him. Danzō tries to shout an order but the Cat drags him backwards: thick trees sprout from nothing, tangling around Danzō’s body like chains.

“What are you doing, Kinoe?” Danzō demands. “Do you really believe you can trap me?”

Fire cracks through the branches, singing the roots and leaves; Kakashi casts his gaze to the ground, slamming his hand onto a shattered piece of Danzō’s tantō blade. The metal slices against his palm — he smears the offering into the dirt, praying for something large, something strong and steady and menacing.

A small pug — a puppy, really, no larger than Kakashi’s hand — appears in midair above Danzō: the dog falls the short amount of space between himself and the enemy before sinking his fangs into Danzō’s shoulder.

The man roars — with anger or surprise or sheer disbelief — distraction forcing the fire to sputter around him. Kinoe tightens their stance, raising new trees from the ground — but it won’t be enough.

“Naruto,” Kakashi whispers.

In his rage, it’s obvious Naruto has no idea who’s before him, friend or foe. The form of the Nine Tails encages his body in the form of thick, bulbous energy, four tails rising and falling with each shuddered breath: he rolls his shoulders back, clawing the earth and righting himself from his first failed attack against Danzō. Without magic or weapons remaining, Kakashi holds Gai close, readying himself for... for whatever must pass.

He smiles, bitter and warm. It's a fitting end: to be killed by one of the few people he's dared to love.

It's then, a figure appears in the dark: a tall and confident shadow who places herself barely an inch before Naruto as the Nine Tailed Fox. Kakashi blinks, certain he's gone mad until he recognizes her voice —

“Nine Tails, you are both my enemy and my dearest friend,” Uchiha Mikoto intones. Shadows flicker to her left and right, again and again, until a dozen Uchihas fill the Temple courtyard. “You remember what I am capable of. What I will not hesitate to do again with the power bestowed to me by my heavenly clan, if you do not let this boy go!”

Naruto's form lets out a horrible scream that is not his own voice, and still, Mikoto does not waver. Kakashi feels like laughing: except he’s afraid that if he begins to laugh, even for a moment, he’ll lose himself forever.

Why is he fated, always, to be rescued by the clan that hates him most?

Naruto rushes forward. Mikoto’s Sharigan flashes, tomoes spinning in a black blur against violent red. In what a feels like a moment — but what must feel so much longer for the boy and clan head — surges and falters, Naruto's roar softening to a soft cry, and then silence.

 

In the quiet, Kakashi traces the curve of Gai’s head, from his forehead, to the tip of his ear, to the edge of his jaw. Mikoto quietly crouches beside him, resting her hand upon his.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “We got your message but… it took time to sneak past the Guardians that Hiruzen assigned to us.”

“It’s alright,” Kakashi lies. “I forgive you.”

Mikoto is quiet, her gaze gentle.

“Do you want me to…”

Kakashi shakes his head.

“Just look after Naruto… please. There’s someone we… someone I have to see, first.”

 

At first, Kakashi believes he’s looking at a frail old man, not a legend.

Lord Chen’s gnarled hands clutch the table’s edge for support, his posture curved and fragile. Yet Kakashi looks closer, drawn in by the faint tug of memory: the man’s light brown skin is healthy, liver spotted limbs corded with muscle, shaved head spotless and shining.

Inside the darkened Temple, the old monk meets Kakashi’s gaze with brown-green eyes that almost sparkle in the faint, pre-dawn light.

“I remember…” Lord Chen begins, voice warm and full. “Your mother had the same mouth as you. So angry, as if she alone could protect the world.”

“Your name isn’t Chen,” Kakashi answers, cold.

“It wasn’t, not on the Isle,” the monk agrees. “But neither was your name Kakashi. Names… are often more malleable than people think.”

Kakashi looks away, gently setting Gai’s body upon the long table. He smooths out a part of his green uniform, feeling the soft fabric underhand.

Kakashi’s last life on the Island of Whirlpools existed nearly a thousand years ago — an impossible age to reach, even with Gai’s curse. Always, Kakashi had imagined Gai’s mentor to the be the same, dying and returning to Kasai Temple with a fixed number of lifetimes.

But Gai had never been allowed to grow this old. Death always found him by thirty-one, the age in which it stole him away in his very first lifetime.

Does this mean Lord Chen is truly immortal? That there’s a way for Gai to… 

“How many times did you defeat your rival?” he demands.

“Just once,” Lord Chen laughs. “Violence is never how men like us are cursed.”

Kakashi’s hand tightens around Gai’s robes, where the cloth is already clotted with dried blood. 

“I want to attend the funeral,” he whispers.

Lord Chen hums, neither answer nor denial. It’s then, in the dance of faint light and shadows, that Kakashi finally notices the edge of Lord Chen’s arms: scarred with deep, horrific burns.

Lord Chen sighs deeply, stepping forward to brush his aged hand across Gai’s wide forehead.

"It always struck me as greatly unkind that spirits could only know life through death. Much like..." his eyes water, gaze heavy as it inspects Gai’s young corpse. "A brave man, in every lifetime. But you understand, don't you, that our curse is not meant to last forever?" the old monk pauses. "The cycle will break. Even circles have a beginning... and an end."


	5. Death and Life

##### PART EIGHT: DEATH

 

On the day that Gai returns to his homeland for the seventh and final time, Kakashi is lazing in his favorite cedar tree, ignoring the force of three furious, determined faces collectively glaring up at him.

“I’m busy,” he yawns, turning to the next chapter in his favorite book, the third in the _Make Out_ series. This particular copy is battered from centuries of use — first from Kushina, and then from himself — but no well-loved object survives without overcoming some hardship.

“Come on, we have better things to do,” sniffs the biggest of three pipsqueak spirits. Pink haired and ill-tempered, Haruno Sakura is the most annoying of Naruto’s friends.

“What a loser,” goads the second tallest of three. Duck haired and impolite, Uchiha Sasuke is the most annoying of Naruto’s friends.

_“Kakashi!”_ screeches the shortest of three. Ill-tempered and impolite, Naruto is simply… the most annoying.

Kakashi glances over the edge of his book. 

“Look. None of you are lightning spirits… right?”

The three young spirits look at each other, then back up at Kakashi. Kakashi smiles.

“Then we’re wasting our time.”

“My rival! How unlike you, to squash the brilliant light of enthusiastic _youth!”_

Kakashi is ashamed to admit it, but _Icha Icha Innocence_ nearly drops from his hands. It’s not that Gai is late — it’s impossible, really, for him to be late — but seventy-six years is the longest they’ve gone without seeing one another, save for the century that passed between what Kakashi believes to be Gai’s second and third lifetimes —

But we’ll return to that soon.

“Gai?” Kakashi asks, voice too sharp to pass as unaffected.

“Bushy-Brows Sensei?” Naruto repeats, wildly spinning to search the shadows between each tree. He spots Gai a moment before Kakashi, launching himself forward so that Kakashi’s first glimpse of Gai is of the reborn monk laughing heartedly, spinning the smallest of three annoying spirits in a wide, easy arc.

Gai — he looks at once so familiar and so different. He’s older, likely in his mid-twenties, with _hair_ that nearly reaches his shoulders in spiky, uneven layers. It is black and silky and ridiculous, but Kakashi has never seen the monk with hair so long and would doubtless be distracted by it longer if not for the marvelous warmth of Gai’s face: there are deep lines around his eyes and mouth, as if he had been born worrying and yet at the same time born laughing, exaggerating his joy as he sets Naruto back upon the ground, crouching to be eye level for introductions to Sakura and Sasuke.

Kakashi stays still on his tree branch, breathless, until he quietly shakes his head, gathering himself enough to tuck his book into a vest pocket and swiftly drop to the ground. Everyone else is distracted: Sakura and Sasuke stare wide-eyed at the boisterous stranger, while Naruto shouts and tugs at Gai’s clothing.

“You’re back!” Naruto laughs. “You’re back! You’re back! You’re back!”

“Did you doubt I’d keep away? The Land of Fire is most verdant and filled with such marvelous, youthful spirits! I spent every moment longing to return.”

“Kakashi!” Naruto shouts, spinning to grin at him, all the while still clutching Gai’s arm. “Look, it’s Bushy-Brows Sensei!”

Despite himself, Kakashi smiles.

“I can see that, Naruto.”

Gai looks up, his deep brown eyes meeting Kakashi’s singular gray.

Something extraordinary happens when you are reunited with someone you love very much, after a very long time away: every moment that you were apart disappears one by one, until all you are left with is pure warmth, warmth that leaves no space between the two of you, no matter how many years have been lost.

“My rival,” Gai smiles, with all his brilliant, shining teeth. “It’s been a while since our last challenge, and these marvelous young spirits are arguing admirably for the very best of lessons.”

Kakashi pretends to consider the request for a few long moments, but by then his feelings are so breathless, so warm and overwhelming, that Gai could have asked for anything — anything at all — and Kakashi would have given it to him.

“Alright,” he answers. “Just one challenge.”

 

Kakashi sizes Gai up, standing across from him in the smooth clearing. Gai is grinning in the dangerous way that takes up his entire face, a fierce warning as much as it as a display of his overflowing youth and enthusiasm: if Kakashi was clever, he’d hold his defense, wait for an opening.

So instead he leaps forward, foot raised in for a clear strike. Gai easily ducks, punching his palm out in the same motion. Kakashi takes in his gut, nearly losing all his air at once. _Gods._ Is Gai strong. Kakashi presses his palm against the grass, pushing upright into a standing position, quickly putting space between them, before rushing forward again. This time his strike lands, hitting Gai quickly on the side: Gai returns the blow with a kick of his own, evenly matching Kakashi’s strength as if he’s holding something back.

Kakashi glances behind him. Right. The kids — Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto are all sitting on the edge of their improvised stage, a bit too close to be totally safe, but far enough away that Kakashi won’t say anything about it. Naruto is already breathless and enraptured: Sasuke and Sakura are trying to look cool and disinterested, which is probably Kakashi’s poor influence.

He looks back to Gai, grinning, small and sharp beneath his cloth mask.

Gai may be stronger than he’s ever been, but so is Kakashi.

This match won’t last long.

 

_Ouch._

Kakashi rubs his head with his free arm, the other slung around Gai’s shoulders. Okay, so he didn’t win outright, but he’s leaning on Gai for support because he _wants_ to, not because he has to.

Naruto and Sasuke and Sakura run together a little bit ahead of them, laughing at pushing at each other until they are out of sight, disappearing beneath the thick canopy on the Uchiha’s land. Naruto waves once before shouting and chasing after his friends; Gai laughs, the sound still in his voice as he turns to look at Kakashi. 

“So, Naruto no longer lives at Kasai Temple?” he asks.

Kakashi shrugs.

“Danzō’s coup…” Kakashi finds he only has the strength to allude to the fight at Kasai Temple. “It made it impossible to keep Naruto’s existence a secret from the Council of Fire. Lord Hiruzen… he thought it best that Naruto learn to live among his own kind.”

“And you didn’t fight to watch over such a brilliant young spirit?” 

Kakashi is quiet, looking at the shadows where the young, bright-eyed spirit disappeared.

“It’s getting late,” he finally says. “We should go.”

Gai frowns but follows Kakashi as he turns away from the Uchiha’s land. His steps are slow but purposeful, matching the saunter that Kakashi sets.

“Where were you born, in this cycle?” Kakashi asks.

Gai hums.

“The Land of Hot Water.”

“Oh.”

Memories flood Kakashi’s head: of war, of searching, of both fighting and being held. It is the latter impressions that stay — Gai’s lips, his smile, his laugh and kisses and more — bringing heat to Kakashi’s cheeks.

He’s never desired sex, not even with Gai, but _with_ Gai he’s come to admire the closeness of the two of them together, the feeling of being known and knowing with unbound intimacy.

Gai catches his eyes. It feels as if there is nothing between them, not even air, even before Kakashi’s lips meet Gai’s, his hands pressing against Gai’s bound breasts, pushing the monk backwards until he stumbles against a strong tree. Gai lets out a soft cry, his returning kisses hasty, inelegant, until he expertly finds his balance — wrapping his arms around Kakashi, pulling him tight, biting at his lips, his tongue, his neck.

Kakashi’s hands slide upward, digging into Gai’s shoulders, his mask tugged lopsided just under his chin so that he can feel the heat of Gai’s mouth and skin.

“Do you still want me?” Kakashi asks, breathless, panting. “In this lifetime?”

“Yes,” Gai whispers, hoarse. “Yes, Kakashi, always—"

Kakashi frames Gai’s gentle face with his rough hands, kissing him again, and again, deep and searching. He is an immortal spirit who has wasted _centuries_ longing for the dead instead of looking to the living, and he is tired of wasting time — he is tired of waiting for life instead of living it. 

“Wait, wait, my rival,” Gai begins. Kakashi swiftly pulls away, ducking his head and staring at the ground as he recaptures his breath, as he remembers himself.

“I’m sorry, the Temple, your vows—”

This isn’t his happiness to ask for, this isn’t his pleasure to take.

Gai leans forward, softly kissing the side of Kakashi’s head and threading his fingers through Kakashi’s silver hair.

“You misunderstand,” he laughs. “I’m not returning to the Temple.”

Kakashi stills, looking up and meeting the heavy gaze of his most beloved rival.

“Then why have you returned?”

Gai’s smile fades into something gentle, something somber.

“I thought we’d have more time, before I’d…” Gai stumbles, before righting himself again with a mighty gulp of air. “But the present is always the perfect moment! Kakashi, you deserve to know, no, you _must_ know, how I died.”

 

In the past, these words would have Kakashi pulling away, sharp and fast.

In this lifetime, he only holds Gai closer.

“I already know how you died.”

Gai shakes his head.

“Not in my last lifetime. In my second.” For a rare moment, Gai is quiet, but Kakashi can feel the weight of his gaze as Kakashi glares outward, focused on the dusk-drenched trees.

“You’re angry with me.”

Kakashi’s mouth presses into a tight, savage line. He does not want to admit his fury, but — 

“Why shouldn’t I be?” he demands, voice low and cold. He narrows his gray eye at his rival, ignoring the way Gai’s eyes have already begun to glisten with tears. “You died _because of me_. And you keep dying, _over and over_ again, _because of me_.”

It’s a truth he’s never spoken — a weight that has always stopped him from asking about Gai’s ends, whether they be in accidents, in sickness, in war, both near and far from him.

This cycle exists because of their challenges, because of their relationship with one another and Kakashi’s inability to accept mortality for what it is:

An end.

“It was my choice to die in battle,” Gai answers, voice firm. “I died to protect you, just as I’ve died to protect others.”

Kakashi laughs, the sound cold and humorless.

“And you believe that gives your death meaning?”

_“Rival.”_

In that moment, it feels difficult — impossible — to love a man in waves: grieving his loss, welcoming his friendship, remembering his love and physical closeness only to lose it all again. Gai now is the not the same as Gai years ago. Gai now is not the same as he’ll be in the years to come.

“You died,” Kakashi answers, feeling raw and empty. Still, he softly raises his pale hand, pressing it lightly against Gai’s jaw, finally brave or afraid enough to hold his gaze. “You’ll die twice more. I don’t need… I don’t _want_ to know anything more than that.”

For what could change with that knowledge?

Gai closes his eyes, his breath shuttered as tears roll down his face.

“My dearest Rival… your fear is why you _must_ know,” he says, voice breaking. “For this is already my final lifetime.”

 

So, Gai tells the story that I could not tell you:

The story of his third, and briefest, life.

 

##### PART THREE: LIFE

 

In my first extraordinary life, there was the splendid boy Lee! He was a brilliant fighter with a handsome soul, who like me, came late to the temple and its teachings.

Yet he was _marvelous_ , an astute student from the beginning! I loved him more than I loved any initiate, then or since — ah, yes, sorry my rival, you’re quite right! I did speak of Lee, quite often and elaborately, before, ha ha!

It’s… It became harder to speak of him, after I died. I know you still grieve for that life, my rival, so I won’t linger long on my first death, but I swear: saving that boy was worth every year lost to me.

Each and every possible moment in them.

My only regret was… how I had to lose the moments with you.

 

Please, my splendid rival, don’t move away. You already know so much of my second life, how I returned, reborn in the beautiful Land of Wind. You can imagine how I confused myself, ha! How I confused others! Filled with knowledge and experience that a young boy can’t have by any natural means — but then I began holding onto to the memories of you, and those memories guided me back to the Land of Fire, to Kasai Temple and Lord Chen, where I became stronger still!

Where I became brave enough, _determined_ enough, to fight against a tyrant and his war.

I died again — far beyond these verdant borders. But I died on my own terms. Not for you, not for the Daimyō. I died for _myself_ , and all the beautiful people I love in the Land of Fire.

And I was not the only one! Many brave monks stood against the government’s ambition, and though none of us could know the price we would pay for our nobility, I believe, _I know_ , those brave monks would have fought and died a hundred times more to inspire the good that’s come.

You see, though I have lived many lives, Kakashi, or maybe because of it, I have never forgotten how precious and beautiful life is. Each cycle is full of pain, full of incredible hardship and loss… incredible loss far greater than I believed I could ever bear, my rival… but this does nothing to diminish the great joy that can be found in our land, in our people, who more than anyone help us endure evil to find beauty again.

 

I know you’ve asked about it before — the memorial stone.

Human wars must seem so short to you, but I believe only because mortal hate is so cowardly. It does not have enough honor to show itself in its full ugliness: it festers, making itself small, lying and shape-shifting to keep itself alive.

In my first lifetime, there was a great hatred for anyone not from the East. In my second lifetime, there was great hatred for anyone not of our nation of Fire. The unrest in the Land of Fire led to a great loss in the war against the Land of Earth, but at least it was a swift and noble end: the war took many less lives than it could have — Rival, what’s wrong?

No, I don’t think you really believe that.

Why? Because who would you wish to die in my place, then or now? The villagers from Konoha? The monks from Kasai temple? The people from any of our travels?

Forgive me, my rival. I hate to bring you pain… this is why… my third lifetime…

In my third lifetime, in my briefest… hatred had transformed itself into a great fear for the monks of Kasai Temple. The Daimyō blamed us for his swift loss against the Land of Earth, and his descendent blamed us for the nation’s poverty, its hardship, its grief.

I did not know any of this, until later. I was born in the Land of Rain, in that Cycle, which is a land of even greater scars and resilience. I was only six when I lost my family, when I came, hungry, to Kasai Temple, where I had strange memories and a stranger longing for people and spirits I did not yet know.

Then the Daimyō’s soldiers arrived and…

The Daimyō’s soldiers arrive and they did not show mercy.

They were not allowed to even feel mercy, for there is no other way to kill a child, to burn down the only home I knew and rob me of the chance of my youth, of my spring, of my chance to ever see again the being most important to me.

It’s alright. I’ve never spoken of this before because… I did not have the words to describe my pain. I did not have the words to describe how it felt to be burned alive.

 

But I wish I had tried earlier, my rival, because I did not see how heavily my lives and their loss weighed upon you. Please, please my rival, dry your tears — they are wasted on me. My deaths are not your fault: they are mine. We are responsible for no one’s life but our own; it is a blessing, as much as it feels like a curse.

I returned to the Land of Fire because this is my last chance. I have lived these eight cycles to the best of my ability, yet there is a difference between care and need, love and possession.

I have always believed that I possessed an infinite amount of time, and I don’t.

We don’t.

It’s why we have to return to the Land of Hot Water, and to the Isle of Whirlpools, no matter how difficult the pain of the past is for us to bear.


	6. Closing

##### PART EIGHT: DEATH

 

Kakashi is older than his father ever was.

It’s a disquieting thought for such a pleasant day, especially after spending so many years hoping against it: wishing he would die, die young, without grief or pain or disappointment. Kakashi rubs his chest over cloth and binder both, feeling out the _thump-thump_ of his immortal heart. Despite all these centuries, it can still feel unnatural, to wake up yearning more for living than for dying.

Yet he does.

“Kakashi, there you are,” the voice is deep with a gentle, teasing tone. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

Kakashi looks up to see Tenzō, who is somehow more terrifying without the presence of their cat mask. Tenzō hasn’t been Kinoe for a long time, but Kakashi can still see the danger behind their wide eyes and easy smile, the way they carry their strength and magic with easy grace, as if they really are a part of the earth rather than a spirit borrowing its power.

“Maa… What are _you_ doing all the way out here?” Kakashi asks in return.

“Returning a book.”

They stride up the hill in a few easy steps, dropping _Icha Icha Paradise_ so that it bounces and rests face-down within Kakashi’s reach. The motion would be careless from anyone else, but from Tenzō, an unnamed shadow from the deepest roots of the forest, it looks calculated — silly.

Beneath his mask, Kakashi smiles.

“Looking for the sequel?”

Tenzō laughs.

“Dunno know if I want to peer that deep into your head.”

Kakashi affects a hurt expression, but his gaze turns back to the distant horizon. The sun is setting beyond the edge of the Land of Fire, and soon, his gray eye will be useless at seeing more than outlines in the dark. Tenzō sits with him, seemingly content with silence. It’s why the two of them have become friends, of a sort: they understand each other’s pain without having to speak of it.

After several long minutes, Tenzō asks, voice careful and cautious:

“Are you certain?”

“Certain about what?” Kakashi asks, only pretending not to follow.

“Leaving,” Tenzō answers, only pretending not to notice.

Kakashi is quiet. After a long, patient wait, Tenzō finally sighs, the sound deep and heavy as they push back to their feet.

“Alright, then,” they say, stretching their arms above their head. There are brushstrokes of darker skin running vertical along their autumn-brown limbs, creating the appearance of tree bark. Now that they’re no longer meeting solely in the dark, locked in battle on opposite sides of a secret struggle, it’s obvious that Tenzō is a peaceful spirit of tremendous power: no longer willing to play at being anything lesser than their true selves.

Finally, Tenzō shares what he’s come so far to share.

“Lord Hiruzen won’t allow you to cross the border,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

 

The next morning, Kakashi is reading, Gai is doing push-ups.

“Five hundred and eighty-seven, five hundred and eighty-eight…”

After reading the same sentence eight times, Kakashi sighs, breathing in deep before giving up and resting the book in his lap.

“Well, are you going to ask?”

Gai’s impressive eyebrows furrow mightily on his square, brown face.

“Ask what?” he says. “Five hundred and ninety-two! Five hundred and…”

“If I’m leaving.”

Gai pushes harder against the ground, thrusting his whole upper-body into the air so that he can manage a perfect, graceful shrug, before dropping into the next push-up.

“That’s up to you, rival!”

Kakashi sighs, looking back at his lap.

“I want to leave,” he insists, though his voice is listless, cold. “Maa, it’s just… it would be too difficult, and we’ve failed at this once before,” he adds. He doesn’t fail often at violent tasks, and when he does, the remembering is unpleasant. “You’re certain you can’t stay here?”

_Where it’s safe,_ he doesn’t say.

Gai eyes go soft, and for a moment he stills, looking upon Kakashi.

“Not while this injustice is free and strong, my rival.”

“I’m no longer in good favor with Lord Hiruzen,” Kakashi cautions. Hiding Minato’s reincarnation for nearly a century had ensured that. “He won’t be convinced to let me go.”

“Why not try the Uchihas? They’ve helped you many times before!”

Kakashi snorts, not bothering to waste time on a reply.

“Rival! I earnestly believe you are mistaken about the Uchihas’ feelings for you! If they really did hate you, then they wouldn’t have protected you from Danzō on the night of the Nine Tails attack, long before Naruto was found.”

Kakashi shrugs.

“Mikoto did that out a fondness for Kushina, not for me.”

Gai lets out a hot puff of air, straining though a set of ten more push-ups before he speaks again.

“As a lightning spirit, you are absolutely certain you can’t cross the border seals without the blessing of a fire spirit?” he asks. “It doesn’t seem right! For a spiritual land to have such strict borders.”

“It wasn’t always this way,” Kakashi shrugs.

Once he had been a guardian himself, watching the border alongside Minato and Obito and Rin. They had only meant to keep their home safe, but _safe_ became stricter and stricter over the course of the Great War.

Kakashi had been forged in that conflict: it had raised him, more than Minato or even Sakumo ever could.

Kakashi is quiet for a long minute.

“The spirit who attacked the Land of Fire, who was working with Danzo to weaken it… he spoke of peace. For the Land of Fire, for the world.”

“Some believe death _is_ peace,” Gai says sagely. He rocks back onto his heels, resting both hands against the earth. “By the month’s end I will be returning to the Isle of Whirlpools. Whether you join me… it’s in your power, my rival.”

 

There is a clay teapot sitting atop a short table with steam curling slowly from its spout, as if has all afternoon to cool.

Kakashi stares at the teapot, battling viscously against the desire to run. He’s a coward, at heart, and every cowardly fiber of his being is convinced that coming here is a terrible mistake from which there will be no recovery.

“My apologies,” Uchiha Mikoto says. She finishes pouring the cups of tea, headless of ceremony or grace, and finally settles herself at the table. She sets two teacups in front of Gai and Kakashi respectively, and then seems to promptly forget about her own. “The tea is a bit bitter. I wasn’t expecting guests this afternoon.”

The head of the Uchiha clan looks distinctly inhuman within the cloistered safety of her own home: her skin is pure white, without yellow or red undertone, hair a sleek black that almost looks made of feathers.

Most disquieting are her eyes, an empty black hiding her clan’s most infamous magic.

“It tastes absolutely splendid!” Gai reassures her, taking a huge gulp of the steaming liquid as if to prove his point through grit alone. Mikoto smiles.

“You’re as fiery as ever,” she laughs. “I’m glad to see you’ve return.”

“Ah, but with many great regrets, I can’t stay for long,” Gai answers. “There is a pressing concern that calls my attention, our attention,” he corrects, looking quickly to Kakashi. Kakashi raises his teacup to his masked lips, poised for an opportunity to drink from it without anyone catching a glimpse of his face.

“Oh?” Mikoto asks. “What’s caught your attention?”

“I grew up in the lush Land of Hot Water, this cycle,” Gai explains. “My home is on the coast, where we had an easy view of the Island of Whirlpools. I believe, and Kakashi agrees, that there are signs of a corrupt spirit living there, signs that were before hidden by Naruto’s many temperas storms.”

“Hm,” there is no emotion or inflection in Mikoto’s voice, just a keen spark of interest in her perfectly dark eyes.

“We believe the spirit took advantage of those storms, maybe even… brought Naruto there himself,” Kakashi says. “We also believe… It’s the spirit who murdered Fugaku, Minato, Kushina,” Kakashi adds, stumbling on the names of long lost loved ones. “We want to hunt him.”

“You want to kill him,” Mikoto states, blunt.

Kakashi looks to Gai, then back to Mikoto.

“We want to bring him to justice, yes.”

Mikoto is quiet for a long while before finally answering.

“I am glad to hear it,” Mikoto says, but each word is slow, as if covering something deep and disapproving. Her body language is practiced, unreadable: she looks down demurely while fidgeting with her hands. “But this is a conversation for Lord Hiruzen, not for me.”

“It was…” Kakashi says, trailing off vaguely, before sighing deep. He will have to explain more than he likes, if he has any chance of leaving here more than a fool. “Lord Hiruzen forbid me from leaving the Land of Fire.”

At this Mikoto looks up again. For a moment her gaze is distant, but just as quickly she shakes her head, regaining her composure through her softness.

“You were both there, the night of the Nine Tails’ attack on our nation,” she says, abruptly seeming to shift the subject. “You must have reflected on its strangeness: that a corrupt spirit would make a deal with Danzō to weaken the Land of Fire, yet then head straight for Konoha, a village of mortals rather than the very spirits weakened by the Nine Tails’ rampage.”

Kakashi is quiet, but Gai’s compassion allows him to make the leap of logic much quicker than himself.

“They knew that the Uchihas would be the ones protecting Konoha,” Gai says, voice deep but quiet. “You were the targets that night.”

Kakashi’s back stiffens. It would be clever: the only spirit capable of killing off the Uchiha clan would be an Uchiha himself — but from there on the motives make no sense. Danzō and his spirits would have benefited greatly from having the Uchihas weakened, but what kind of spirit would agree to destroy their own land?

Their own family?

Mikoto looks out through an open window, beyond to the forests of the Uchiha’s lands. They are the most isolated of any of the fire clans, carefully patrolling their sacred, dense trees and underbrush: by choice or by necessity… Kakashi had shamefully never thought to consider.

“The spirit responsible is still out there, unpunished,” Kakashi says, soft.

Uchiha Mikoto looks back upon Kakashi and Gai.

“And who allows that?” Mikoto asks.

Gai frowns, looking to Kakashi.

Kakashi turns the plain teacup in his hands.

“Hiruzen’s hands are tied,” he argues. “He’s controlled by the Council of Fire.”

“What good man is led by evil ones?”

“He’s our leader,” Kakashi protests. “He may not perfect, or kind… but he’s not Danzō.”

Mikoto’s mouth grows tighter.

“He’s worse,” she counters. “He allows spirits like Danzō to bloody their blades, so that he may welcome the fruits of their labor with clean hands.”

Kakashi looks at his hands.

_Clean hands._ What must that feel like?

“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly. “This was a mistake.”

“Kakashi—” Gai begins.

“I thought the Uchihas would leap at the chance to rid of me, but I was mistaken. I’m sorry for wasting your time Gai, Lady Mikoto.”

Mikoto’s face grows softer, her voice a touch warmer.

“Kakashi…” she mummers, so like a mother that it stabs in its hurt. “You misunderstand. I know. You were only children when Obito gave up his Sharigan to you. He couldn’t know that to do so would be to end his cycles of rebirth — back then, too many spirits were raised by the war, instead of their loved ones.” Mikoto’s smile grows pained. “I mourn for him, but even in my deepest grief… I never blamed you.”

Kakashi swallows. He can’t meet her eyes, he can’t face them.

“Then who?”

Mikoto smiles sadly.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The room is quiet, save for the sound of softly cooling tea, a light breeze drifting in through an open window. Mikoto closes her eyes, fists tight on her thighs, breath loud as she breathes in deep, breathes longer out.

“I will help you cross the Land of Fire’s border,” she says. “But I request something if you return, _when_ you return.”

“Anything!” Gai declares.

Mikoto back is straight, her expression firm.

“I ask for your support, Hatake of the Sharigan, Maito of the Eternal Temple,” Mikoto nods to each of them in the turn. “If I am to stop our lands cycle of hatred and destruction, if I am to free my clan and their people… then I will need powerful allies to usurp Hiruzen as Chief Guardian.”

 

Minato had always been a flash of bright light.

Centuries ago, he lost himself in laughter within minutes of meeting Kakashi, even though the young spirit wouldn’t stop scowling from Sakumo’s side. At the time, Kakashi had been too young to hold a form taller than the elder spirit’s waist; he had been unsure of his body, too, experimenting with full breasts and spiky hair, looking much like a poky miniature of Sakumo.

“You’re clever,” Minato had grinned. “But you still have a lot to learn about what it means to be a Guardian, to look after the land instead of dominating it.”

“My land is _gone_ ,” Kakashi had answered. Already, he could no longer clearly remember the Island of Whirlpools: his last cycle had died too early in its destruction to leave a lasting impression of anything but its destruction.

“Yes, it is gone,” Minato had agreed. “Yet you’re still fighting. What for?”

 

“Are you certain about this?” Kakashi asks, one last time, as they watch the Isle of Whirlpools approach. Gai grunts as he pulls back the oars, rolling his shoulders forward as he dips them above the waves, back down again. He says that he learned to row from an old neighbor, years and years ago, though he seems so natural in his strength it’s as if he were born to it.

Gai grins through the effort of steering.

“This is our most dangerous challenge yet, my rival,” he answers. “But with your magnificence at my side, how could we fail?”

Gai is as handsome as he’s ever been. His limbs are thick with carefully built muscles, face framed by short, soft hair instead of a neatly shaved skull. He’s still wearing obnoxious green robes, but they are no longer from Kasai Temple: it is a reminder, Gai has changed.

He plans to return from this journey changed further still.

Kakashi feels his chest tighten. 

He wonders, for a moment, if he’s a strong enough man to follow.

“I love you,” Kakashi blurts out, thoughtless and true.

The boat stills. Kakashi looks down at Gai, who is both bug eyed and slack jawed. Kakashi smiles, soft, hidden safely behind his mask and an increasingly red face. Gai blinks rapidly, face growing redder and redder as he picks up rowing again.

“I love you too, Kakashi!”

Kakashi looks up at the sky, feeling hot and electric and tired, good and bad feelings tangled together all at once. He tugs at his mask, as if that will make the emotions any easier to bear: Gai’s faith in him has always been overwhelming, a blessing as much as it is a challenge to live up to.

Yet his friendship, his love… it’s made Kakashi a stronger spirit.

A kinder one, too.

 

The Island of Whirlpools looks in worse shape than it had last time they visited, decades ago. Kakashi can barely see the glimmers of his memories as they walk past the bit of coast where they found Naruto, past the Island’s center, further and further to the far side of the island, camping through the night before heading further east.

“Are you alright?” Gai asks.

Kakashi frowns.

“When we found Naruto, I thought, maybe…” he begins, his rough attempt at honesty. He looks away. “But my home really is dead.”

Gai takes Kakashi’s hand in his.

“Not dead, only wounded!” he urges. “There is still fight in it left! The corrupt spirit is here, leeching life from what you call a lost land — but we _found_ Naruto here. He’s proof that healed spirits can make this their home again.”

 

They walk hand in hand for an hour or so, picking slowly over the rubble and ruin. This part of the island is a treacherous terrain of loose rock and sharply broken peaks: they have to weak back and forth to find a safe path, and the exposure makes Kakashi feel slow, _vulnerable_ , an uncomfortable prickling that never quite leaves the back of his neck.

Then Kakashi spots something that makes the danger seem worth it: he pauses, pulling away from Gai to squint at a half-broken rock that lies just at a cliff’s edge.

“You’ve found something?” Gai asks, already breathless with excitement.

“A broken seal.”

Not just any seal: the slashing characters are meant to call forward the three-tailed beast, one of the monsters of legendary.

Kakashi stands, looking further: not far from them is a seal for the four tails, and beyond that, the six tails. One beast alone carries the power of all five elements within them, to have two, three… _nine,_ together in one place… Kakashi shivers. He looks behind Gai and sees the edge of marks for the two-tail beast, before the ground falls away in chunks of ashy gray.

Gai kneels, gently pressing his hand against the nearest seal. When nothing happens, he sweeps his palm across it, reveling more of the broken magic.

“This is old and strong, but it feels like… the powerful seal that brilliant Kushina fixed, on the beach all those years ago.”

Kakashi nods in agreement. Now that Gai’s pointed it out, it’s obvious that the seals for each tailed beast are overlaid with imitations of border seals, experiments, then, for what later happened in the Land of Fire.

He drops low to look closer. These seals are meant to be cages: a sick, twisted form of protection.

For a moment, Kakashi remembers Rin in all her vivid tragedy: the tears in her eyes; the smile on her soft, bloodied face; the odd feeling in her chest where his hand seemed to sink deep into a soul that was _hers_ but already dying.

_Thank you, Kakashi._

“Why here?” Gai asks, pulling Kakashi back to the present. He realizes then that he’s not breathing — he hastily inhales fresh air, thick with the smell of salt and ruin, all the while shaking out the stray sparks from his palms.

“It wasn’t the corrupt spirit,” Kakashi says, words slow and weighted. “This was the Uzamaki clan.”

Kushina’s clan.

No other spirits, not even Kakashi’s mentor, Minato, had ever achieved the mastery in seals that the Uzamaki clan clamed. Even Kushina alone could manage individual seals of this caliber — so what would stop the elders of her clan from envisioning a power that was greater, even if it was more dangerous?

The island’s sudden destruction from the inside-out, the terror left in the spirits who would only allude to and never name the loss of their home… the corrupt spirit who _found_ this, _learned_ from it, and thought… thought that the only thing to do was repeat history? To use these seals to pursue the most dangerous tailed beast of them all, to set it on their neighbors, no, _their own land_ , Kakashi realizes, remembering Mikoto’s hesitation.

“But how did an Uchiha spirit know about this?” Gai asks, mind working just as quickly.

“The spirit knew of, _knew_ , Kushina,” Kakashi whispers. “He was part of the war, he…”

The thought is there, _almost_ , but sometimes, no matter how clever we claim to be, our minds will stop: will protect us from the truth because to face it would mean a shattering I would forever be changed by.

“Kakashi!” Gai shouts.

The warning is enough: Kakashi dives to the left, narrowly avoiding the center of a wild, curling ball of fire, long as a dragon’s tongue. The heat pours over him, the smoke curls around his eyes and lungs: for a moment he can’t see anything, and then he only sees Gai:

His rival had dived the opposite way, rolling towards the side of the stone cliff. The fire fades, and then with a roar, begins again, this time aimed directly for the moral: Gai grimaces, and without even looking once to Kakashi, rolls towards and over the side of the stone cliff.

 

Kakashi is running even before the fire’s cleared, widely looking over the edge for his rival — frantic and _grateful_ , for the one and only time in his life, that Gai’s ugly robes are so easy to spot.

“Gai, wait there!” he shouts.

The former Kasai monk is gripping the side of the cliff, grimacing at the stone before looking upwards. His dark eyes widen, and the color drains from his face so quickly that his dark face almost seems pale.

“Rival, behind you!”

A knife glints at Kakashi’s side: he spins to meet it, gripping the white hand of the attacker with his own, shoving up to twist the kunai knife away. He allows the blade to clatter to the singed stone, striking instead with his free hand, the blow caught close to the enemy’s belly.

_“You.”_

The white mask glares at him, hideous and close: one dark eye glints under sunlight, the second eyehole revealing only an empty socket and a hideous tangle of deep, red scars.

“Your little pet is quick, for a mortal,” the corrupt spirit taunts. “But don’t worry. I’ll take him from you, just as you’ve taken everything from me.”

They break apart and rush towards each other again. Impossibly, the enemy’s grown even faster than before, drawing Kakashi in only to allow his attacks to sink right through him, dancing an easy web around him, keeping him too close to the cliff’s edge. Kakashi can barely think, breathing hard and ragged, throwing all of his energy against the corrupt spirit in a desperate bid to stay alive, to keep _Gai_ alive.

“The last time we met…” Kakashi pants, shifting his stance, trying to ready for the next attack. “I don’t seem to remember murdering _your_ friends.”

The spirit lazily circles him. Kakashi risks glancing beyond his shadow: he can hear Gai steady making his way up the rock: he will not broken by it, will not be a crushing repeat of the past and all Kakashi lost before in it.

“Oh, we go back much further than _that,_ ” the spirit taunts, drawing Kakashi’s attention back onto him. The lighting spirit frowns.

“We know each other?”

His gaze flickers, again, towards the empty, scarred eye socket. He can almost feel the spirit’s gloating smile, his cruel attention and glee.

“Yes, do you finally remember how I lost my eye? I believe you called it _a gift_ — a gift whose return is long overdue.”

Kakashi’s chest turns cold.

“No,” Kakashi whispers. _“Obito.”_

 

Once upon a time, long before our story, there was a young spirit crushed by rocks.

Who destroyed the cave? Who set an avalanche of earth and stone upon a fragile body, bursting his blood and bones, crushing his lungs, forever distorting his face and voice?

Maybe it was the Land of Water, whose bloodthirsty warriors were feared by even the greatest of spirits.

Maybe it was the Land of Earth, whose lands were ravaged by a great greed, whose people needed new homes and fresh worshipers.

Or maybe it was the Land of Fire, who feared the loss of peace so greatly that they were willing to sacrifice anything for it — even children.

It doesn’t matter to our story. Uchiha Obito died. Crushed by stone, alone save for two fragile friends.

As Kakashi and Rin wept at his graveside, he offered one final gift: a single, magic eye in exchange for Kakashi’s ruined one, a savage price payed in someone else’s war.

The operation was frantic, brutal, ugly.

The gesture: beautiful.

In our story, Obito dies crushed by stone. Obito dies with his blood coating Rin’s flesh, with his left eye adjusting to Kakashi’s bones.

We do not learn until later, much later, that a spirit who dies without their full body returned to the land is doomed to purgatory, never to enter their life’s next cycle.

Never to find peace.

 

Obito slams Kakashi into the ground, Sharigan blazing, knife held dirty and dark at his throat.

“I’ve _dreamed_ of this,” he snarls. “With your death, Rin will be one step closer to peace.”

Kakashi stares at the Sharigan. He can’t breathe. His limbs feel too heavy, his eyes… it feels as if neither belong to him.

_Rin… Obito._

He deserves this. He deserves to die.

“KAKASHI!” Gai screams.

Kakashi’s breath returns all at once, so painful, he nearly slams himself forward into the knife.

“Rin’s death—!” he shouts. “Was her own choice!”

Kakashi can’t understand Rin’s suicide. He can’t condone the thoughts that led to her loss and he’ll never stop grieving for her absence — but he must accept that it had been her choice alone to make, just as this is his alone: that he will _live._

Kakashi rolls forward, lightning in his fist as he drives upward at Obito, forcing the corrupt spirit back. Kakashi leaps to his feet, attacking again, and again, every muscle burning. Kakashi’s Sharigan tints the world red: Obito’s spins in answer, matching him perfectly hit for hit.

This is the spirit who defeated Minato, who released the Nine Tailed Fox and killed Kushina.

_This is his friend._

Kakashi’s hand falters. Obito cries out as his revenge is assured, shoving his fist forward: 

Gai grabs Obito’s wrist, twisting until the knife clatters to the ground. He drives Obito back, assured, hit after hit: neither will he die, neither will he let their lives end here. 

His open-palm hits with a sickening crack, breaking open the smooth, white mask.

The wood falls away, revealing Obito and a hideous mass of scars. The spirit snarls, clutching his one remaining eye and then just as quickly yanking his hand away, keeping the eye closed as it runs thick with blood.

Even blind, his hatred keeps his standing: he lashes out with both hands, fire sweeping out from his hands in a wild, roaring arc. Gai cries out and half-crumples forward, but stays standing, barely, at Kakashi’s side. Kakashi lets his lightning forward, and together, the rivals push their enemy towards the cliff’s precipice. 

Obito teeters on its edge, feeling out the drop, looking wildly between the spirit and man as if he can discern anything in the darkness of his hatred.

“Obito, don’t—”

Obito doesn’t listen: he begins to fall backward, and behind his gray and red eyes Kakashi sees Sakumo and Rin and —

Kakashi reaches forward, gripping tight to Obito’s arms and yanking him backwards. Gai steps quickly to crowd him against the stone while Kakashi’s hand fluidly run through the sealing spell taught to him so long ago by a laughing, red head spirit; he presses his palm against Obito’s neck, or as near as he can reach, short of breath even as the seal seals shines and sinks into Obito’s skin.

“Kill me!” he screams. “Kill me, you _coward,_ just like you killed Rin!”

Kakashi stands beside his dearest rival, looking down at the spirit who was once his dearest friend. Obito's breath is wild, feral, his body stained in dirt and blood — and beneath all the hurt, Kakashi sees something, someone.

“No,” Kakashi answers, voice cracking yet strong. "No."

 

“What are you going to do?” Gai whispers, late at night. They haven’t gone far: Gai’s wounded leg is in bad shape — _very_ bad shape — and Obito is no peaceful prisoner even with his eye damaged and his magic locked up tight.

They’ve made camp near the center of the Island, building a fire to keep Obito warm while they slip away, far enough to talk in private and near enough to keep an eye on their prisoner.

Kakashi rubs his covered Sharigan, Obito’s Sharigan, once freely given and thoughtless taken.

“I can’t force him to come home,” Kakashi says, words weighed with a heavy sigh.

“No,” Gai agrees, gently, leaning against Kakashi’s side and resting his nearest hand atop Kakashi’s thigh.

_Love isn’t possession._

“But he deserves time,” Kakashi says, looking up towards the stars. “To feel whole.”

It was true that Obito had caused great harm to the Land of Fire — but the Land of Fire had hurt him first. The war had taken everything from Obito: his friends, his clan, his youth, his body. 

Kakashi presses his hand, again, against his left eye. Even if he was to go back, before the war… there’s too much pain wrapped up in Obito and Kakashi’s relationship, too much grief and aggrandizing, but maybe —

Maybe he can make a gesture that offers at least _the chance_ to heal one of their many, many wounds. 

Gai watches Kakashi carefully, and then firmly, he wraps his calloused hand around the thin fingers that keep poking at the Sharigan.

“What will happen to you, if you give up your eye?”

Kakashi shrugs. He can’t say that Gai isn’t right to worry: the Sharigan is his eye now, as much as it still belongs to Obito. The rules of spirits are strange and twisting, but clear: if a spirit gives up a part of themselves that is not returned to the earth, then their cycles of death and rebirth will end.

“I’ll be half-blind,” he jokes, turning to Gai with a smile so wide, it crinkles both eyes. “And this life, if I accept it, will be my last one. I’ll be... mortal,” he says, considering the simple word in his mouth. “By your side, I hope. Well, if you’ll allow it.”

Once, Kakashi had been very young, and very afraid.

And over the centuries his pain only seemed to deepen: he lost his home, his friends, the rival he learned to love again and again, through every lifetime.

But through it all, he still grew. He accepted a new land, a found family, and a love he’s always wanted but only recently felt worthy of.

“Of course, Kakashi,” Gai promises, tears streaming down in his face and he hiccups through his swell of incredible emotion. “You’re my eternal rival, in this and every lifetime!”


End file.
